Amelie on lab safety
Head of School Amelie Eriksson Karlström writes about the recent management team meeting at CBH School and the issue of lab safety discussed there.
Last week, the CBH School's management team had a full-day meeting to discuss current issues. For example, we discussed the new quality system for education, the recently decided operational plan, and reviewed the status of the school's finances. In the afternoon, we had a longer session on lab safety. The CBH School has lab activities in most of the school's departments and it is important to keep track of the routines, both for the safety of the staff and students, but also because there are legal requirements that we need to follow.
One law we don't always follow, but where we can do the right thing with fairly simple measures, is to label all bottles and cans with the correct hazard symbols. The old hazard symbols, which were replaced by new versions in 2015, have been largely phased out, but there are still products in labs that are incorrectly labelled.
Other procedures that are not always followed well enough include the annual inventory of chemicals, carrying out risk assessments and handling hazardous waste correctly. As the regulations change occasionally and we have partly different procedures at our different campuses, it can be difficult to keep track and it was good to get an up-to-date review at the management team meeting.
If you have any questions about lab safety, please contact the school's lab safety coordinator, Natalya Ivchenko. We all need to work together to ensure a safe lab environment!
Amelie