January 4, 2006

To:       Safety Coordinators
            Safety Liaisons
            Division Directors
            Deputy Division Directors

From:   Steven Chu

There have been a number of accidents, near-hits, and instances where safety rules and regulations were not followed at the Berkeley Lab. In December, 2005, David McGraw, Graham Fleming and I shut down a PI’s research operation after we personally walked through his laboratories and found his labs to be in an unsafe condition. A door lock to restricted area laser labs was pried open and destroyed, several laser interlocks were not connected, the roof was leaking water onto one of the lab floors, electrical power lines were found on the floor, chemical waste had accumulated in a number of areas and was not properly disposed of, and a compressed gas cylinder with regulator attached was not properly secured. The labs will remain closed until they are brought up to proper safety standards.

After that inspection, I was somewhat shaken, and inspected my own laboratories at Stanford over Christmas Holiday. It had been more than a month since I walked through my own atomic physics labs. While one of my atomic physics labs was in very good shape, the adjacent lab was a mess. Electrical cables and equipment were on the floor and debris was collecting in the corners. Work in that lab has been stopped until it is cleaned up and made safe. A check will also be made to see that all interlocks are operational before resuming work.

My biophysics labs were in good shape, except that entrance into one lab was not properly interlocked. A two watt infrared “optical tweezers” laser was recently installed in the lab, and while the door to the hallway was properly interlocked, the door leading from one lab to another was not. This problem is being fixed.

In the past, I have stopped all lab work when I thought safety culture was beginning to wane. My entire lab was asked to “clean up”, disposing properly of old reagents, samples, and used chemicals, getting electrical wiring and extension cords off the floor, etc. On a few occasions, I would clean up alongside my students and post docs. Even though all worked was stopped for a day, the communal group activity seemed to be a great morale booster.

Despite my efforts to instill a healthy safety culture in my labs, an important lesson learned this holiday is that this can degrade in just a few months. Maintaining a good safety attitude needs constant attention, and even though most of my group has a good attitude, one particular sub-group had gone astray.

I will be asking that all of our PIs (and supervisors on the operations side of LBNL) to personally walk through each of their labs by January 20, 2006. I want the division safety coordinators and safety liaisons to accompany the PIs so that they can help the PI identify and correct electrical, chemical, laser, mechanical, bio- and other safety hazards. It will be the responsibility of the division directors (with help of their division deputies, safety coordinators and liaisons) to insure that their PIs had made this inspection, and that repairs and fixes are made in a timely manner. They should be entered into the laboratory’s corrective action tracking system (LCATS) to ensure closure. Emergency call lists must be updated. Chemicals should be stored properly and chemical waste properly disposed of. Loose wires, extension cords and debris taken off the floor, gas tanks tied securely, and so on. Follow-up inspections by the safety coordinators/liaisons are essential to guarantee that proper actions are taken.

I was on a University wide safety committee at Stanford in the mid-1990's. Working with the new head of EH&S, the committee formed a new set of safety policies for the campus. (SLAC was not in our domain.) One policy we initiated was that Stanford would hold each PI personally responsible and liable for the safety of their research group. I still believe that a primary safety champion is the PI/immediate supervisor of each group: the emphasis (or lack of emphasis) on safety comes directly from the group leader.

I have included an article written by Dr Peck Thian Guan, Director of Office of Safety, Health & Environment at the National University of Singapore on the role of PIs as safety champions. He writes:

“The PI is the best person to inculcate a safety mindset in our students. They mentor, coach, guide, teach, check and audit laboratory conditions and practices and even discipline those who disregard safety rules and put themselves and their colleagues at risk.”

I found this article to be very helpful. Please read it and share it with all the PIs in your areas.