Laboratory Safety: Best Practices

Ensure you are maintaining a safe laboratory environment and mitigating common laboratory hazards.

A laboratory presents a wide array of hazards such as bloodborne pathogens, temperature extremes, ionizing radiation, sharps, highly flammable materials, and hazardous chemicals. Failure to provide a safe working environment can lead to OSHA violations and legal and financial consequences for both the company and individual employees. It is imperative that companies and managers employ best practices to maintain a safe laboratory environment for their employees. This topic will help persons responsible for ensuring laboratory safety identify and mitigate common laboratory hazards. This material will provide an overview of common classes of laboratory hazards and federal regulations pertaining to laboratory safety. We will then provide more detailed information pertaining to the most common challenges with laboratory safety - chemical storage, hazardous waste, and biological safety. Finally, we will describe how engineering and administrative controls can be used to mitigate risk. This information is critical for employers looking to mitigate risk and avoid OSHA violations in a laboratory environment.

Faculty

Matthew L. Wohlever, Ph.D.

University of Toledo