Beyond chemical safety— an integrated approach to laboratory safety management

Abstract

Health and safety programs for laboratories are typically oriented around specific regulatory requirements, even though hazards in laboratories seldom respect these boundaries. Not only does this place an unnecessary burden on researchers because they have to keep track of several related health and safety activities, it also increases the chance that laboratory hazards might not be addressed because they are part of some other “program”. The new UCSD Lab Safety Guide organizes all health and safety activities required for basic lab operation into a single document, the Lab Safety Plan. Completion of a Lab Safety Plan will identify health and safety needs for that lab, provide appropriate documentation, and outline required activities and training. The modular nature of the Plan allows it to be tailored to lab activities and, after training and implementation, labs can then be audited against their plan. This unified approach stems from the creation of a “Research Safety Team” out of the previous biological, chemical, and radiation safety groups, and will be coupled with sophisticated data management in a centralized database to track and benchmark safety activities.