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MRI Safety

MRL Building Safety Committee Meeting Minutes - 09/14/05

Members Attending:

Gaylord Shawver, Julie Anderson, Jeff Long, Tina O’Hara, Nichole Wonderling, Mike Grutzeck, Becky Clark, Dan Lehman

Members Absent:

Maria Dicola, Ruyan Guo

Discussion:

• Fire Evacuation Plan - Posters have been prepared by Tim Klinger and Gaylord Shawver for posting throughout the building. Gaylord and Charlie will be putting up the posters in the coming weeks. A formal, written evacuation plan is needed and a volunteer was requested to draft the plan. Mike Grutzeck will draft a plan for review by the committee. Gaylord and Nichole offered to help as needed.
• Chemical Waste Books - Many log books are not being kept up to date and labs are not following required procedures. As this is a very time consuming process, volunteers from the committee were requested to take full responsibility for a wing of the building in this regard. These persons will monitor labs on their respective wings and contact the person in charge of an offending laboratory to correct problems. If the problem is not promptly corrected, the laboratory will be reported to Environmental Health and Safety without further warning to the laboratory occupants. Environmental Health and Safety then has the authority to close the laboratory until the offense has been corrected. Julie Anderson, Jeff Long, Maria Dicola, and Nichole Wonderling will perform this task in their respective wings in the MRL building. Ruyan Guo will be responsible in the RUA building. It was agreed that a more aggressive approach is needed in dealing with offending laboratories and that proper documentation is required to provide EHS.
• Lock-out / Tag-out - Although not required to follow OSHA regulations, EHS wants all departments to develop and implement a Lock-out / Tag-out policy. Lock-out / Tag-out is essentially a means of locking down or disabling any device that poses an “energy-producing hazard” during maintenance or repair procedures. Such hazards can be electrical, mechanical, radiation, etc. There is currently no funding for this project to purchase the necessary devices. Discussions with EHS are continuing on this matter.
• Mandatory Test Compliance - Compliance with the completing mandatory EHS chemical waste handling and the mandatory MRL safety course / exam has been poor. Amy Davis and Tina O’Hara are working to send reminders to any individual that has not completed the test within 30 days of arrival. Occupants of the building will receive one reminder 30 days after arrival. If the course is not completed within 90 days, the names of those individuals will be reported to EHS. EHS will then prohibit those persons to work in the laboratory until the requirement has been fulfilled. Tina is also working on a check-list of “Need To Do’s” that will be given to new people in hopes of increasing compliance with the course / exam requirements.

Next Meeting:

Date / place / time will be announced by Gaylord Shawver in November.