Workplace Safety & Procedures

[Stopsignhank]

Yup.

If you still work at UCLA they should have the ultimate in safety rules now.

 

[IronWing]

IW,
If your glasses do not have side shields they are not safety glasses. They do not meet the ANSI Z87.1 spec. At least for true safety glasses at my workplace.

They have removable side shields and the frames are Z87.2. The lenses are high impact rated (+).

 

[Stopsignhank]

They have removable side shields and the frames are Z87.2. The lenses are high impact rated (+).

Then they are safety glasses. Usually when I tell visitors they have to wear safety glasses they point at their prescription glasses and say I have these. They then get kind of irked when I tell them they are not good enough.

I wear prescription glasses and I have separate safety glasses when I go out on the floor.

 

[IronWing]

I wear prescription glasses and I have separate safety glasses when I go out on the floor.

I spend so much time in environments requiring safety glasses that I wear them as my regular glasses. They work too; I've never become pregnant.

I'm pretty sure that if I were ever to get contacts, I would poke my eye out within a week.

 

[Brainonska511]

If you still work at UCLA they should have the ultimate in safety rules now.

In academia, nothing changes until someone gets seriously hurt or killed, and even them, the changes tend to be localized to one institution. UCLA has needed it up, but others continue to have woefully inadequate safety cultures.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I have a desk job so not much danger, but I sometimes go run jumpers on the MDF. Gotten shocks here and there. Ring voltage stings a little. 170vac or something like that. Pretty sure it's current limited though.

 

[CraKaJaX]

In academia, nothing changes until someone gets seriously hurt or killed, and even them, the changes tend to be localized to one institution. UCLA has needed it up, but others continue to have woefully inadequate safety cultures.

This is crazy to me. The education 'industry' has money coming out of their ears, but can't spend an extra penny or two to update their safety equipment for their employees? I find that hard to believe. My field (power generation, steam/GT plants) spends an atrocious amount of money on equipment and tools and programs involving safety. Of course things still happen, but no one is running around saying their safety glasses are out of date.

 

[IronWing]

This is crazy to me. The education 'industry' has money coming out of their ears, but can't spend an extra penny or two to update their safety equipment for their employees? I find that hard to believe. My field (power generation, steam/GT plants) spends an atrocious amount of money on equipment and tools and programs involving safety. Of course things still happen, but no one is running around saying their safety glasses are out of date.

It's a lack of accountability. I've never heard of a professor getting fired for safety violations. The recent ruling that grad students are humans, er, employees, should make it clear that OSHA rules even apply to professors.

 

[CraKaJaX]

It's a lack of accountability. I've never heard of a professor getting fired for safety violations. The recent ruling that grad students are humans, er, employees, should make it clear that OSHA rules even apply to professors.

It's funny this has come up. I was recently looking at jobs at Duke, as I got some email notifications about openings there (I want to relocate to NC, so I'm following a bunch of places in the area). There was one for a systems operator. It was basically making sure that all the power systems were up-to-date, had reliable backups (hospital), etc. If shit hits the fan and Duke goes black, I think there'd be a lot of pissed off people. My point is, it's more than professors. It's all the people behind the scenes - landscaping, wastewater plant, power system, any new construction being done, etc. It would be pennies to any major university to update their equipment and make the environment safer for the employees and/or any contractors on site.

 

[Brainonska511]

This is crazy to me. The education 'industry' has money coming out of their ears, but can't spend an extra penny or two to update their safety equipment for their employees? I find that hard to believe. My field (power generation, steam/GT plants) spends an atrocious amount of money on equipment and tools and programs involving safety. Of course things still happen, but no one is running around saying their safety glasses are out of date.

It's not that they don't provide safety equipment, it's just that they don't enforce the rules. Everyone has access to lab coats, safety glasses, and gloves. And it's good that stuff is made available, but when no one enforces rules, you're just setting up a dangerous situation. I see it all the time:

-Regular eyeglasses used in place of safety glasses
-people wearing shorts in the lab
-hair not tied back
-wearing tight fitting clothing, in particular leggings. (Clothing should be lose fitting to keep it away from your skin in the event of a spill and make it easier to remove)
-wearing synthetic fabrics, which tend to be more flammable and can melt to the skin in an accident
-inappropriate footwear (sure, you're wearing closed toe shoes, but what about the open top that keeps the foot exposed?)
-chemicals used and stored in inappropriate places - (eg: not in a fume hood or stored next to incompatible chemicals)

Edit:

I should add, at my institution, it's quite amusing (in a sick sort of way). Safety training for grad students is a one-time thing. But hazardous waste training is a once yearly thing. I bet you can guess which one has the university more worried about fines. And that's partly because the EPA and the city have previously fined sister institutions large sums of money for hazardous waste violations.

 

[Brainonska511]

It's a lack of accountability. I've never heard of a professor getting fired for safety violations. The recent ruling that grad students are humans, er, employees, should make it clear that OSHA rules even apply to professors.

I hope that the NRLB ruling will have a ripple effect that will prod agencies like OSHA, which previously overlook a lot of academia (since there were no 'employees'), into action. I've also seen talk among some chemistry grad students that a union wouldn't help them, but I maintain that it could help them in a way that they don't even realize - such as pushing for a real safety culture in the university setting and maybe providing better safety equipment (eg: maybe prescription safety glasses instead of clunky ones that fit over glasses)

 

[CraKaJaX]

It's not that they don't provide safety equipment, it's just that they don't enforce the rules. Everyone has access to lab coats, safety glasses, and gloves. And it's good that stuff is made available, but when no one enforces rules, you're just setting up a dangerous situation. I see it all the time:

-Regular eyeglasses used in place of safety glasses
-people wearing shorts in the lab
-hair not tied back
-wearing tight fitting clothing, in particular leggings. (Clothing should be lose fitting to keep it away from your skin in the event of a spill and make it easier to remove)
-wearing synthetic fabrics, which tend to be more flammable and can melt to the skin in an accident
-inappropriate footwear (sure, you're wearing closed toe shoes, but what about the open top that keeps the foot exposed?)
-chemicals used and stored in inappropriate places - (eg: not in a fume hood or stored next to incompatible chemicals)

That makes more sense. For my degree, we had to take Chem 1&2. My personal experience was that in all of our labs, the professor wasn't even there. It was the TA who ran those. Typically TAs were graduate students under the normal prof. Mine was a smoking hot chick who didn't really care too much about safety - so I get your point. If shit hit the fan I'm sure it would have created quite a stir and something MIGHT have been done or implemented going forward.. But luckily nothing ever did.

 

[Brainonska511]

That makes more sense. For my degree, we had to take Chem 1&2. My personal experience was that in all of our labs, the professor wasn't even there. It was the TA who ran those. Typically TAs were graduate students under the normal prof. Mine was a smoking hot chick who didn't really care too much about safety - so I get your point. If shit hit the fan I'm sure it would have created quite a stir and something MIGHT have been done or implemented going forward.. But luckily nothing ever did.

In the lab classes I've taught, safety was taken fairly seriously, both by faculty and TAs. My concern arises from the non-class related lab spaces, where graduate students are working on their thesis work in professors' own lab spaces.

 

[CraKaJaX]

In the lab classes I've taught, safety was taken fairly seriously, both by faculty and TAs. My concern arises from the non-class related lab spaces, where graduate students are working on their thesis work in professors' own lab spaces.

The less Chem I had to take, the better. I hated chemistry, except when the prof did a cool demo of chemical reactions. Luckily my roommate was Chem eng, so that helped.

I obviously did not step foot in the labs you speak of, lol.

 

[Squisher]

I got hot metal chips in my eyes all the time when wearing safety glasses because the job required me to bend over and then look up to the tooling on the top die to restore that tooling. Goggles didn't work because the environment has too hot and steamy. At some point in time you'd accidentally be bent over and be peering over your glasses. Then after a bad incident of getting a huge chip stuck right over my pupil and having a doc peck it out with a needle I started using a mirror and staying out of harms way. I got really good at grinding and using a burr upside down and backwards, just like a dentist. After that I always carried a woman's compact (minus the makeup) in mypocket.

The connecting rod presses didn't open quite this wide, but you'll get the idea about hot and steamy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1kN6FyN8E

 

[Stopsignhank]

The reason I said what I did to UCLAlabrat is that there was a student that was killed in a UCLA lab recently (a few years ago) that is why I said that UCLA should have tightened their safety rules by now.

Brian, you are raising some excellent safety points. I agree completely with what you are saying.