Identifying Laboratory Hazards

Identifying hazards in the lab is a very crucial part of lab safety. The research laboratory world is always growing and expanding, making many new and great advances.   There are constantly new procedures being developed, and new equipment being used as well.  As exciting as this may be, all this innovation and learning also has a downside to it.  With the increasing amount of advances, it also brings with it a increasing amount of hazards.  

And unfortunately some of these hazards may not be discovered until a tragedy unveils the danger.  The first step to identifying hazards is recognizing where they are possible, in other words, defining the scope of work.  In most research laboratories, researchers and workers are required to wear standard personal protective equipment.  This equipment often includes a lab coat, goggles or safety glasses, and sometimes gloves.  The lab coat prevents direct contact with your cloths or skin in the event of a spill.  The eye protection protects your eyes from a splash of chemicals, or objects shooting threw the air.  And the gloves protect your hands from direct contact with whatever you may be working with.  While these are the bare essentials, and what everyone thinks about when they hear “lab safety” they are not always the full extant of lab safety.  This is where defining the scope of work being conducted in the laboratory becomes so crucial.  Some labs may be dealing with biological hazards, pathogens, virus, or bacteria.  In this case it is crucial to have barriers of various sorts in place to protect the employees from coming in contact.  Laboratories often deal with a great deal of these biological hazards, and it is not only important to contain them properly in the lab, but also once they need to leave the lab.  This means labeling them as biological waste and properly disposing of them.  In laboratories that deal with extreme dangers to humanity like the Ebola virus, recognizing possible hazards to the workers and outside world is crucial.  Nobody wants a deadly virus walking out of a lab on the bottom of someone’s shoe. 

Chemical hazards are another giant factor in recognizing potential hazards.  Research laboratories deal with a vast array of dangerous chemicals.  Sometimes they are developing chemicals they may not even know the properties of yet.  Chemicals may have dangerous properties such as off-gassing dangerous fumes, creating fire hazards, creating oxygen displacement hazards and so much more.  Also it is important that laboratories do not exceed the laboratory amount.  The laboratory amount sets a limit on the amount of hazardous chemicals a lab is aloud to work with.  The laboratory amount was exceeded in the UCLA incident causing a massive explosion and resulting in the loss of a life. 

There also physical hazards in labs.  This includes hazards that occur in every other work place as well.  For example, slips, trips, and falls.  Someone could knock over a container that breaks and lets a chemical react with oxygen and causes an explosion or fire.  The fact of the matter is it is nearly impossible to recognize all hazards in the lab.  The best thing we as safety professionals can do is try and identify as many possible hazards as we can, and take actions to prevent them from happening.