| June 16 2012
Three years ago we began surveying our readers to find out about their lab safety practices and to track how those practices change moving forward. Last year’s survey indicated fairly substantial improvement over 2010 despite the continuing
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Welcome to part two in our series on bloodborne pathogens. The first part discussed the basics of BBP:
There’s a tendency to think that if someone is appointed safety coordinator, they have to do all the work for the rest of us. False! A coordinator is just that. He or she is not a “parent.” Each person needs to be responsible for safety in general and for a specific part of the program in particular. Here’s a list of a number of different specific assignments:
A predominant perception among too many workplaces is that safety is expensive. That it costs too much to comply with all the personnel training, hazard assessments, workplace surveillance, medical evaluations, record keeping, etc. But have you ever really stopped to consider the full cost of a workplace mishap? Even a “minor” one? What about a serious or catastrophic accident? What would that end up costing? This article takes an in-depth look at the big picture and reveals a disturbing trend.
Last year we happily reported that “despite continuing economic pressures that might have made lab health and safety a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have,’” there had been substantial improvements in lab health and safety practices. Unfortunately, we cannot report the same trend this year. In fact, what we learned from this year’s survey is that there has been a significant across-the-board decrease in all aspects of laboratory safety practices, which begs the question “Why?”
Digital learning environment provides academic researchers with resources for laboratory safety.
Employees, faculty, staff, and students need to be encouraged to develop a genuine concern about their own health and safety. It’s too easy to care less and become careless.
There are some things that make your spine tingle that are exciting and good for you, but more often than not, if you experience a tingling in your back it is a sign of something bad. We are talking about back pain, herniated discs or worse. Back injuries are probably not something you immediately associate with laboratory research. However, there are plenty of ways to injure your back if you work in a laboratory, and back injuries are among the most common reasons for lost work time.1 Working in research facilities often involves heavy lifting and possible overexertion and, for production labs, a real potential for repetitive strain and overuse. Lifting and loading chemical containers, sample containers, and sample trays, or moving equipment such as gas cylinders, vacuum pumps, and waste containers, are just a few operations that present a risk for injury. That is why back injuries are still one of the most common hazards faced each day by this sector of workers.
The Vermont Safety & Health Council, and the Vermont Small Business Development Center recently presented BioTek with the 2013 "Governor's Award for Outstanding Workplace Safety" in the Large Business category at a ceremony in South Burlington, VT.
All new employees, students, faculty, and staff should receive a specially designed introduction to your safety program.
Creating the best slip, trip, and fall prevention program for your lab
There’s a tendency to think that if someone is appointed safety coordinator, they have to do all the work for the rest of us. False! A coordinator is just that. He or she is not a “parent.” Each person needs to be responsible for safety in general and for a specific part of the program in particular. Here’s a list of a number of different specific assignments:
Employees, faculty, staff, and students need to be encouraged to develop a genuine concern about their own health and safety. It’s too easy to care less and become careless.
All new employees, students, faculty, and staff should receive a specially designed introduction to your safety program.
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