5 Health & Safety Tips for New Labs

January 19 2020 - When opening a new lab, there are many considerations, but safety should be near the top of the list. Providing a safe environment for your employees to work in is required by law, but when you're working in a lab, it's advisable to go above and beyond what is required of you.

Getting your health and safety protocols right is something that takes time and effort, but if you take the right steps, your lab will run much more efficiently.

When planning your new lab, consider these important health and safety tips.

Create a Safety Manual

The best place to begin when it comes to health and safety in your lab is with a safety manual. Create a committee to discuss the major safety risks that exist in your lab and create protocols to counteract those risks.

Once you've created a safety manual, make it a big part of your employee training. Creating a safety manual not only makes sure everyone knows their expectations, but it also limits your liability in the event of an accident.

Practice Safety Procedures

People can know safety procedures, but when an accident happens, they’re not always easy to carry out. The best way to overcome this is by practicing your most important procedures so that people know what to do.

The great benefit of these practice drills is you can learn from your mistakes and adjust your protocols accordingly. Ideally, you don't want to be spending your time practicing safety procedures, but these exercises can save lives.

You can't foresee every risk, but you can practice your response to the most common risks in your lab.

Maintain Equipment

Your equipment might be shiny and new now, but if you don't focus on maintaining it, then it can quickly become a safety hazard.

With all the hazardous materials in a laboratory, it is important to get things like chromatography servicing done by the professionals.

Keeping your equipment in tip-top condition is going to help the performance of your lab and keep your employees safe at the same time.

Stay on Top of the Basics

Simple principles like mobile phone policies, cleaning up after spills, and wearing the right safety equipment seem basic, but they need to be reinforced continually. When one person's standards start to slip, others start to follow their lead, and that's when accidents can happen.

Regular safety refreshers are a great way to keep safety a priority.

Develop Good Accident Reporting Procedures

Reporting of accidents, however minor or major, is an important part of health and safety. The easier you can make it for employees to report minor incidents, the more likely they are to do it.

When you have a clear picture of what accidents occur in the lab, you can better understand the risks you face and tailor your safety procedures accordingly.

Health and safety is something you need to stay on top of, and a good reporting procedure will help you to do this.

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