Risk assessment
Risk Assessments
Risk assessments have to be performed before any procedure in a lab can be started.
This includes:
Dissolving non-poissoneuos samples in standard solvents
Work inside laser labs
cleaning cuvettes with solvents, solvent mixtures, or solutions
An excellent source for information to make this risk assessment is the university chemical database "Klara". https://secure.port.se/alphaquest/app_lu
Flow Chart for Risk assessment
Procedure
The risk assessment should include:
Names and amounts of chemicals used
Short description of the procedures used
Description of risks that might occur if this procedure is followed
Consequences if this incident occurs
Probability of this incident to occur
Evaluation of combination of probability and consequence
Possible measures to reduce the consequences/risk to an acceptable limit
We recommend that you use the excel sheet provided on this page since it helps you to follow these steps:
https://www.kc.lu.se/english/employee/general-safety-regulations/4-general-rules/45-risk-assessment/
this is a local copy of this file made Jan 2023
The important thing is to see this as a help to plan your work. Stop for 5 minutes during your weekly planning, add any new procedure to your risk assessment check with another person that you do not overlook anything and enjoy science with significantly reduced risks.
Formal procedure in our division:
Fill the form and discuss with your supervisor/PI
The lab reponsible countersigns and collects the forms.
CMR - Carcinogen Mutagen, toxic for Reproduction
Some substances are classified as particular harmful and require extra administrative steps to be allowed to work with them. These are often labeled as CMR-Carcinogen, Mutagen, toxic for Reproduction. To work with them care must be taken to absolutely avoid any exposure, which is to be reflected in the Risk assessment. In addition a product substitution report has to be filed, showing that there is no other choice but this substance. (use the form in the right margin) For the work with particular substances including cadmium and lead a regular health check needs to be performed. This health check is initiated by filling the form (see right margin) and having the head of the division sign it.
Helping material
The main Questions you should answer is:
Is the consequence of the incident severe or not.
If it is severe: What two independent layers of safety can i introduce to reduce it to not severe (only one of this can be the Personal Protection Equipment = PPE)
If it is not severe: Apply ALARA = As low as reasonable achievable
For work with any chemical consider here:
Personal safety: ingestion, dermal = skin contact, vapour = breathing;
availability of adequate PPE: chemical resistance of gloves, a gasmask of the right type, correct safety goggles;
environmental exposure: Disposal and extra containment needed;
fire safety: flame point, burnable gases, boiling point, self ignition point;
We recommend to get the "non-influence level" and the "typical exposure" from the Safety data sheets.
Important: This analysis has to be done for all substances you could come in contact with. This means, e.g. the solvent, the solute and solvent + solute. The latter is important for work with solvents that are skin penetrating. So if you dissolve a poissoneous substance in a solvent and the solvent is skin penetrating any exposure to skin is severe independent of the amount.
See the links on the left side to guides for PPE help performing this evaluation
We also recommend to use the chemical database Klara for preparing the risk assessment, it is an excellent source for SDS and further information.