Labs & Studios - June 12, 2019
Present: A. Diochon, M. Moore, T. Moore, J. Sylvestre, S. Girvin, J. Joncas
TIME Commenced: 9:00 AM
1.0 Agenda : Approved.
2.0 Review of Minutes : April 17, 2019 – Approved
3.0 Inspection Reports: Geology
- Eyewash to be tested weekly
- Expired calcium gluconate
- Grinding dust needs wet cleanup more often
Instrumentation
- Gas cylinder needs chain
- Concern regarding face velocity of low flow fume hood
- Fume hoods are operating as designed and do offer same protection as older style hoods
- Were certified when put into service
4.0 Incident Reports: Solvent Smell CB Weekend
Security reported a solvent smell in CB Saturday morning coming from CB 1014a, with no obvious source. Several open buckets of what appeared to be oil were found in the lab, blocking the emergency exit. Unable to reach technician responsible for the space or anyone else in the department. H&S directed the lab to be locked out until someone with knowledge of the space could be contacted for advice.
Inspection on Monday morning found a 20 L drum of varsol stored in the flammable’s cabinet with a shop rag as a cap, and a spill of varsol on the floor that had not been cleaned up.
Security has difficulty finding personnel afterhours to respond to lab incidents, which is an on-going issue.
Recommendation to Deans to assist Security in obtaining after hours numbers for emergency contacts.
5.0 Old Business:
5.1 Injury Stats – presented and discussed. 2015-2019 segment to be normalized for grad students and plotted by year to see if there is a correlation. All new incidents discussed by committee will be assigned standard root causes as well as recommendations made to avoid issue in future, to make the tracking easier to manage. – Deferred until July meeting
5.2 Fume Hood Decontamination
Use of strong mineral acids has corroded some of the fan boxes that service the hoods, causing the backdraft prevention damper louvers to corrode and fall to the bottom of the boxes. Will require another shut down of hoods to replace the louvers in 3-4 units.
5.3 Noise from compressor
- Kailash and Steve to find some time for the compressor to be moved. In the meantime, hearing protection is required for everyone in the space while it is running.
6.0 New Business:
6.1 WHMIS Training
WHMIS 1988 training inactivated on D2L. Questions for old symbol recognition added to the WHMIS 2015 quiz to cover old material as containers are relabeled.
6.2 Chemical Waste Pick-up Issues
We used a new company for the first time to collect our hazardous waste. All waste had to be pre-sorted on site prior to the pick-up date. Issues were encountered with bottle labeling and container suitability. Procedure and lab safety manual will be revised to reflect the following and communicated to all haz waste generators:
- Waste will be picked up soon after the request has been generated
- Each container will need to have contents listed on container and waste pick-up number
- One waste request per chemical will be required (multiple containers of same chemical will be allowed on one request).
- Waste requests must be printed, signed and available at time of pickup.
6.2 ESA inspection
Electrical control console was replaced and inspected by ESA. It did not have certifications required. Will require a field inspection.
6.3 Keep in touch
Concerns were raised regarding some security officers not wanting to conduct KIT checks. Tiffany verified with Security Supervisor that KIT is a supported, well used and vital service offered by security. Any issues should be brought directly to her attention to address with the officer in question.
6.4 CASES fumehoods
Two issues in CASES regarding fumehoods:
1) One hood randomly closes the sash.
2) Improper use by users. Very important to not use “emergency” button as it is monitored by security and physical plant. This triggers an alarm in the system and initiates emergency response. Additionally, it is essential to safe function that sliding access doors are closed unless accessing equipment. When the sash is down, the unit goes into a maintenance mode with a lower ventilation rate. If door is open, this could lead to loss of containment of contaminants. H&S will look at creating a laminated user guide for the hoods as many users missed the initial hood training and their safety features are vastly different than our standard hoods.
7.0 Adjournment: 9:53 AM
8.0 NEXT MEETING: July 17, 2019