Routine Safety Procedures

The RiskAssess Team suggests that each school adopt a set of routine safety procedures for laboratory experiments conducted at the school. The set of routine safety procedures may include the following:

• Teachers to discuss laboratory safety issues with students prior to commencing experiments.
• Students and staff to wear enclosed footwear in the laboratory.
• Students and staff to tie their hair back when conducting an experiment.
• Students and staff to wear appropriate clothing and avoid loose sleeves that could knock over equipment.
• Students and staff to ensure all ties and other similar dangling objects to be tied out of the way or removed.
• Students and staff to wear safety goggles throughout an experiment and its subsequent clean-up, during demonstrations, and at any other time that there is possibility of eye injury. Those wearing prescription glasses should wear safety goggles, as prescription glasses are insufficient.
• Staff to ensure that relevant MSDSs are easily available for all chemicals. The MSDS contains the first-aid information for each chemical, as well as precautions for use, health hazard information, recommended personal protective equipment and safe handling information, including dealing with spills and emergencies.
• Chemicals to be purchased only from suppliers who provide an appropriate MSDS that is less than 5 years old.
• Staff to ensure that appropriate equipment and chemicals are available for emergencies and spills.
• Students to report all spills or injuries to the teacher.
• Staff to clean up spills as advised in the MSDS.
• Students to report breakages immediately. Only staff to clean up breakages.
• Staff to ensure appropriate fire fighting equipment is available, and understand how to use the equipment.
• Staff to ensure culturing of microorganisms is done is a safe manner.
• No person should eat or store food in the laboratory.

Routine safety procedures should be adopted by the school’s Occupational Health and Safety Committtee, in consultation with the Principal.

All Science staff should be made aware of the routine safety procedures, prior to commencing laboratory work.