Biosafety and Biosecurity

Biosafety and biosecurity take steps to prevent harm to anyone or anything (animals, plants, research, etc.) by a bioactive material from the lab. Biosafety prevents exposures to lab staff inside the lab. No one gets sick from their work. Biosecurity is preventing exposures to the population and environment outside the lab. What happens inside the lab, stays in the lab. Biosafety and biosecurity use risk groupings and biosafety levels to categorize the pathogenicity risks and required controls.

Chemical Hygiene

Chemical hygiene focuses on the hazards and risks presented by the variety of chemicals used in labs, research, and science. Some of these risks are obvious, and others are hidden. The six chemical hygiene categories covered are flammables/combustibles, corrosives, oxidizers, reactives, asphyxiants, and toxins.

Physical Hazards

Physical hazards include the risks from electrical, mechanical, noise, temperature, vibration, ergonomics, and slips, trips, and falls. Many of these hazard types don’t get sufficient attention—they’re invisible, hidden in equipment, or rare. However, they are critical and can be both a frequent and devastating source of harm.

Radiation Health and Safety

Radiation is a complex and technical topic. This course covers the various types of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, how they differ, and their effects. There are several types of ionizing radiation with significant health effects. It requires greater means of control, including time, distance, and shielding and the concept of ALARA or “as low as reasonably achievable.” Nonionizing radiation also presents risks, mostly to the eyes and skin. The controls needed are focused on our outer bodies and are less complex.

Risk Assessing and Characterizing

Risk is a human construct helping us stay safe and alive. There is so much more to risk than the simple equation, risk equals severity times exposure times probability [R = S x E x P]. There are many tools and techniques to help us determine risk. One used in labs is called RAMP. We’ll explore all of this and more.

Risk Communication and Decision-Making

Sometimes, odd perceptions of risk drive our decision-making or what is called, “judgment under uncertainty”. Our affective risk system drives decisions over our analytical one. Similarly, our fast thinking makes many decisions in the moment. Communicating all of this and our perceptions is a challenge.

Risk Management and Mitigation

Once we’ve decided we have significant risk and assessed it properly, we need to determine some suitable and adequate means to mitigate or reduce our risks. As we detailed in our Technical Topics stream of courses, the hierarchy of controls is the primary means by which we decide how and in what order to implement hazard control methods. We always want to control the hazard, as much as possible, before it reaches us. Hint: PPE isn’t at the top of the order.

Life Safety

If there is one risk that we all face together, it’s a fire. Life safety is mostly about fires, exits, chemical maximum allowable quantities, building codes, and walking and working surfaces. Other chemical hazards are covered in the chemical hygiene course. This course is about helping everyone get out alive.

Safety Culture

Safety culture can be thought of simply as how we do safety around here. Clearly, there is more to it such as group norms and behaviors. Culture has many advantages over compliance-driven approaches. Safety culture starts at the top by leaders setting examples, being present, and caring for everyone’s wellbeing. A well led team will follow.

Managing for Safety and Risk Effectiveness

An effective leader instills and facilitates psychological safety which enables everyone to be effectively heard. A complementary technique is safety management by walking around. In addition to leaders, teams benefit from safety management systems (prescribed methods) and standards (set by non-governmental entities). True learning organizations that learn from their mistakes benefit greatly from these strategies.

Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To borrow and bend a quote, what we choose to measure, matters. We can measure lagging indicators, like injuries, leading indicators, like risk assessments, or both. It is challenging to decide what objectives and key results, and key performance indicators to collect, measure, track, report, emphasize, and manage toward. This course will help you decide which ones, why, and how best to do so.

Materials and Substance Tracking

Materials move in and out of labs on a daily basis. These include chemicals, biologicals, and many other substances, equipment, and supplies. The scientific process changes many of these things along the way. This is often what is described in greater detail as the life cycle. As part of sustainability efforts, we often track what goes in and what comes out in an effort to reduce consumption, waste, and carbon footprint.