Creating a safer lab in 2021

Creating a Safer Lab

We’ve put together some ideas to aid in improving the safety of your lab. Even if you have already implemented most of these steps, it is valuable to revisit lab safety regularly. 

Health, Safety and Environmental policy

It’s essential to have an HS&E policy to ensure consistency throughout your organisation. Setting out your approach with a clear list of expected standards for all employees will help the business’ health and safety remain well-managed.

Your HS&E policy could include; health & safety risk assessments with a set of guidelines for working practices for all staff and cleanliness for the lab guidelines, including all PPE requirements. It could also include environmental impact management, including energy savings and a protocol for closing the lab down at the end of your working day to reduce the risk of potential health & safety issues. It is good practice to elect team members to be part of a committee to ensure that your H&SE policy is met and reviewed regularly. HS&E awareness should be an essential part of the policy. A training session for new starters with an orientation guide will ensure that they know your HS&E policies when they join the team.

Encourage the team to be more responsible for Health & Safety.

To help support your staff and students, it may be a good idea to regularly emphasise the importance of each person in the workspace doing their bit to maintain good levels of health & safety in the lab. This can include caring for their health and safety and the care of others, involving each member of the team in the health & safety program, giving them individual responsibilities, and providing rewards for maintaining the best practice.

Ask all staff and students to commit to the safety procedures in place.

Most labs will have a safety manual or manuals in place for working in the lab. As a business or institution, ask your students or staff to read your safety manual and sign an agreement to say that they have read and fully understand the safety procedures in place. You could even provide regular tests and refresher sessions to ensure that everyone is up to date on the safety practices for your institution.

Conduct regular inspections

You could choose to carry out unannounced inspections periodically to check whether laboratory teams follow the guides and procedures they have signed or helped to put together in your policy document. Preparing a checklist and letting your team know that there will be regular inspections will encourage the team to maintain a high level of consideration for how they work in the lab and adhere to the safety rules in place. This will allow you to monitor performance and talk to your staff or students about any areas they may improve.

Document hazards and assess risks thoroughly to prevent health & safety issues.

A full risk assessment should be written for every new experiment to consider the potential hazards. The risk assessment should identify any health & safety issues prior to them arising and facilitate the documentation of procedures for if things are wrong. This will ensure that they can be resolved quickly and in the safest possible way.

Questions to ask include:

• What are the hazards?
• What are the worst possible things that could go wrong?
• How will I deal with them?
• What are the prudent practices, protective facilities and equipment necessary to minimise the risk of exposure to the hazards?

As part of these risk assessments, any incidents in the lab must be documented in as much detail as possible to record what happened and how they were resolved. The risk assessments can be reviewed at regular committee meetings and used to help shape future practice. This will ensure hazards and risks are minimised for everyone working in the lab. Every business needs to also have a fire drill in place and plans for dealing with dangerous situations such as an explosion, poisoning, chemical spill, vapour release, electric shock, bleeding, and personal contamination. Signage and all emergency telephone numbers displayed in obvious places about the lab will help staff in emergencies.

All experiments should be discussed with the broader team before commencement.

This sort of practice will ensure that any new experiments have been thoroughly considered and that a proper risk assessment is in place, utilising the knowledge and experience of the wider team. A risk assessment can include things such as preventing lab technicians from working alone in the lab, forbidding experiments to be left unattended unless considered safe to do so and implementing rules for continuing the risk assessment or safety program outside of the lab, such as preventing staff from accidentally transferring dangerous substances to their car or home which could put themselves and others at risk.

Maintain proper and safe storage for substances in the laboratory.

Depending on the types of work carried out in your laboratory, there may be other health and safety requirements for storing the substances. Any substance considered dangerous must be included in risk assessments and pre-experiment discussions with peers. You should consider the storage and use of flammable or combustible materials, allowing the minimum amount of these substances to be available in each lab.

Do not allow eating or drinking or any food storage in the lab to prevent anyone from getting ill as a result. Smoking should also be banned from the lab, which in the UK is illegal as standard. You should maintain an inventory of everything you have in storage to ensure that all chemicals can be accounted for and efficiently replenished when required; this should reduce or prevent over-ordering of unnecessary chemicals. Always store acids and bases separately, and store fuels and oxidisers separately.