A mechanism for providing institutional assurance for the safe handling of acutely toxic or physically dangerous chemicals in research laboratories

Chemical use is ubiquitous in research laboratories and is necessary for the advancement of research and creation of new technology. Regulatory mechanisms currently exist that mandate the provision of basic safety training for workers and the assurance that essential safety information is readily available. Unfortunately, in some cases, institutional oversight of specific “high risk” laboratory chemical use may be absent. This may be due in part to the difficulty in delineating between chemicals that are commonly used but possess a hazardous characteristic (e.g., flammability) and those that exhibit acutely toxic or particularly dangerous properties (e.g., explosivity). In 1994, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston began addressing this issue through the creation of an institutional Chemical Safety Committee (CSC) that consists largely of research faculty. Through a shared governance process, the committee identified criteria for which certain chemical use would require institutional review and approval, striving to achieve a balance between supporting research while providing an added level of assurance that work involving the acutely toxic or physically dangerous chemical can be performed safely. The process used for developing these criteria is described along with the lessons learned from its evolutionary process.