Identifying and Evaluating Hazards in Research Laboratories Guidelines developed by the Hazards Identification and Evaluation Task Force of the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Chemical Safety Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society Table of Contents FOREWORD ................................................................................................................................................... 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................. 5 Task Force Members ..................................................................................................................................... 6 1. SCOPE AND APPLICATION ..................................................................................................................... 7 2. DEFINITIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 7 3. HAZARDS IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION ................................................................................... 10 4. ESTABLISHING ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES .................................................................................... 14 5. CHOOSING AND USING A TECHNIQUE FROM THIS GUIDE ................................................................. 17 6. CHANGE CONTROL .............................................................................................................................. 19 7. ASSESSING IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................................................................... 21 8. CHEMICAL SAFETY LEVELS – AN APPROACH TO CONTROL BANDING FOR CHEMICAL USE ............... 23 9. JOB HAZARDS ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................... 28 10. WHAT-IF ANALYSIS .......................................................................................................................... 36 11. CHECKLISTS ..................................................................................................................................... 54 12. STRUCTURED DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES ...................................... 68 13. REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 76 2 FOREWORD Before 2008 the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, also known as the Chemical Safety Board (CSB),a was concerned about reports of significant incidents in academic laboratories. The CSB indicated this concern would likely lead to an investigation of a future serious incident in an academic laboratory. In January 2010, a chemistry graduate student at Texas Tech University was seriously injured in an explosion. The CSB investigated this incident and issued its report in October 2011. The CSB noted: “The lessons learned from the incident provide all academic communities with an important opportunity to compare their own policies and practices to that which existed at Texas Tech leading up to the incident.” The CSB report noted several factors contributed to the incident, including “comprehensive guidance on managing the hazards unique to laboratory chemical research in the academic environment is lacking. Current standards on hazard evaluations, risk assessments, and hazard mitigation are geared toward industrial settings and are not transferrable to the academic research laboratory environment.”1 The CSB asked the American Chemical Society (ACS) for assistance with developing guidance that would address this gap. The ACS accepted the CSB recommendation to: “Develop good practice guidance that identifies and describes methodologies to assess and control hazards that can be used successfully in a research laboratory.” The ACS assigned the responsibility for this task to the ACS Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS). The CCS, in close coordination with the Division of Chemical Health and Safety, commissioned a Task Force of stakeholders and subject matter experts to create a guide for identifying and evaluating hazards, and managing the associated risks of these hazards in research laboratories. Several factors were considered during the development of this guide, as follows: • To provide techniques to ensure hazard information is gathered and analyzed. • To aid researchers in recognizing the value of input from others with varying experiences. • To provide techniques that can be used for a variety of different types of activities (routine protocols, modifications to current research, or entirely new activities). • To allow for the variable nature of research tasks by providing tools that help researchers recognize and respond to change—both large and small. This guide was developed for researchers without deference to where they are in their careers— undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, instructors, principal investigators (PIs), technicians, or department chairs—who have varied approaches to learning and experimental design and who may require different kinds of assessment tools. a See Appendix A for a glossary of acronyms. 3 The ACS seeks to develop tools that are useful for colleagues working in the scientific research community. It is important that strong communication and exchanges of ideas between the ACS and the research community be established and maintained, so we can clearly learn what does and does not work well. This will allow the ACS to modify these techniques to be more useful. It is the sincere hope of the ACS that hazards identification and evaluation techniques become incorporated into the everyday activities of the scientific research community. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The ACS’s Committee on Chemical Safety would like to acknowledge the following: • The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, for their continued dedication to providing sound investigations of chemical-related accidents across the United States which in turn enable us to develop ways to better protect ourselves and our colleagues. • Members of the Task Force, writing teams, reviewers and ACS support staff who produced these guidelines. • Battelle Memorial Institute who in keeping with its “commitment to science and technology for the greater good” provided monetary support for the project. 5 Task Force Members The ACS Joint Board/CCS Hazards Identification and Evaluation Task Force produced the following report, titled “Identifying and Evaluating Hazards in Research Laboratories.” The members of the Task Force include: Kimberly Begley Jeskie, Task Force Chair ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety (CHAS), Past Chair Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN Peter Ashbrook, CHAS Member University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Dominick Casadonte, ACS Member Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX Debbie Decker, CHAS Member University of California, Davis, CA Laurence J. Doemeny, CCS Past Chair National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Ret.), San Diego, CA Robert H. Hill, Jr., CCS Chair Battelle Memorial Institute, Atlanta, GA Todd Houts, CCS Member University of Missouri, Columbia, MO Ken Kretchman, CHAS Member North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC Robin Izzo, CCS, Laboratory Chemical and Waste Management Task Force Chair Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Samuella B. Sigmann, CHAS Member Appalachian State University, Boone, NC Erik Talley, CHAS Member Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY Marta U. Gmurczyk, ACS Staff Liaison to CCS American Chemical Society, Washington, DC 6 1. SCOPE AND APPLICATION 1.1. Scope This guide can be used by an individual researcher or an institution in the development of processes to effectively integrate the identification or recognition of hazards and the evaluation of the risks of those hazards with the aim of using this information to formulate a plan to minimize or manage the risk presented by those hazards prior to the start of work. It also provides strategies for: (1) identifying and responding to changing conditions that can affect a hazard evaluation, (2) implementing processes in an institution not accustomed to the use of the techniques provided in this document, and (3) assessing implementation of hazards identification and evaluation methodologies. 1.2. Application This guide was written for the researcher without deference to the point in their careers— undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, instructors, principal investigators (PIs), or department chairs for implementation in a scientific research laboratory. Particular consideration was given to the variable nature of research in the choice and presentation of the techniques provided. Furthermore, recognizing the variable nature of research, this guide seeks to provide assessment approaches that are relatively easy to implement and use. While research laboratories and researchers are the primary audience for this guidance, other audiences may find it equally useful. 2. DEFINITIONS Change control: The management process for requesting, reviewing, approving, and carrying out and controlling changes to agreed-upon deliverables or operational boundaries. It is sometimes referred to as "Change Management." Chemical exposure hazard: A chemical for which there is evidence that acute (immediate) or chronic (delayed) health effects may occur in an exposed population. Exposure is related