Blood Borne Pathogens in the Lab

For this blog we examined a lab used for blood borne pathogens. This lab is most commonly BSL 2. It is not under the OSHA standard since it is in a college but there are rules under the OU policy. There are around 13 students in the lab every year and they have to undergo blood borne pathogens training. This lab is under the exercise physiology department. All chemicals here are registered under the government, if they are not registered then they will have to face fines. Also, if they have excess of a certain chemical they have to report it. The lab has to be reapproved every couple years by the university. There are meetings about which chemicals are being stored every quarter when an Environmental Health Science officer inspects the lab. This lab does not have a chemical storage cabinet due to lack of funds, however they are still being stored properly. The chemicals being stored in the fridge are not being stored properly since they are using a normal fridge which is not intrinsically safe. It is not explosion proof and it could have an electrical spark. There was also issues with their disposal of two-part pathogens; they should be disposed every two weeks, however they are disposed here every couple months due to lack of funds. These are sometimes allowed to be dumped down the drain if the concentration is low enough; for this process you must add bleach to it and then dilute with water as you pour it down the drain. The man showing us around told us that he does not enforce personal protective equipment but he tells them too wear it when they first get there. At the end of each lab they always unplug everything. There are many things that go wrong in the lab, some common things are: forgetting to put the lid on the centrifuge which causes the vials to break and the contents to aerosolize. When this happens they must leave the lab for at least ten minutes. Some students also sometimes forget to pour the chemical and bleach mixture with water down the drain, this creates poison gas which requires them to run the water and leave the lab for ten minutes. The lab tables are covered with an adsorbent material that they change very frequently. This lab did not have a drain in the floor so if they ever have to use the eye wash station the water will have nowhere to go and remain stagnant on the ground. The eye wash and shower station are an extension of the sink. There is proper ventilation in this lab where the chemicals can get sucked out of the room. Overall I thought that this lab was in good shape however it did not seem like the professor in charge was enforcing the student’s safety enough which could cause health problems for both the university and the students careers out of college. This could develop into a major problem and needs to be addressed right away.

https://www.osha.gov/

https://www.ohio.edu/policy/numeric.html

Identifying Hazards

Lab safety is something that is in your head, not in any textbook. It is dangerous to not check into the lab mentally while performing a lab procedure. To be safe in the lab you need to be able to properly identify hazards. To identify hazards in any situations it is easier to split them into categories. An important way to identify hazards in the lab is to look at the Chemical Hygiene Program that your company has currently employed. This can normally be found by your Department of Environmental Health and Safety. Another way to identify hazards is by looking at the Blood borne Pathogens Plan.  

A typical chemical hygiene plan consists of general laboratory procedures, chemical acquisition distribution and storage, hazard identification, and many others. The main parts we will focus on to identify hazards are: behavior in the laboratory and hazard identification. It is inappropriate to enact in any horseplay or practical jokes in the laboratory. Workers can also never work alone on a potentially dangerous activity. This last rule also incorporates that a procedure shall not be completed if the reaction is not well understood. People are also not allowed to eat or drink in the laboratory because this could end up being a serious hazard when there are dangerous chemicals in the lab and ingesting them would cause health effects.

To identify hazards the containers need to have a clear and legible label that is not easily removable. Safety Data Sheets should be readily available for all workers to be able to see in the lab. OSHA standards must be followed at all times. When first receiving the new shipment of chemicals you must make sure that you have the proper storage requirements and room available to contain the shipment. This can be best avoided by checking the storage area before placing the order so this problem does not arise.

               Lab hazards can be split into different categories which are dealt with in different ways. Classes of hazardous chemicals are identified in different ways. The level of hazard determines how these materials will be stored and handled throughout the lab process. The storage of these chemicals are classified under the National Fire Prevention Association, (NFPA.) NFPA labels the room with a door posting that separates the chemicals into four categories, fire hazard, health hazard, specific hazard, and reactivity hazard. The first three are ranked one through four, with four being the most dangerous.

               Certain chemicals are classified as particularly hazardous substances, PHSs. These chemicals are ones that pose significant threats to human health. These must have the proper labels on all containers and must be stored in the proper area and in the correct amounts. If an extremely dangerous chemical was stored in too high of an amount it could react badly with nearby chemicals.

               They can also be categorized into nanomaterials, or materials that have an external dimension in the nanoscale. These can both be naturally occurring and can be produced in manufacturing, or Engineered Nanomaterials.   

Relation of OSHA Lab Standards to other Lab Standards

The OSHA Laboratory Standard was out in place to address the safety and health of the workers in the lab. These standards supersede existing OSHA health standards because they are specifically intended for labs, however the general duty clause carries over into the laboratory requiring the employers to free the space from all recognized hazards. These hazards are commonly defined as any hazard you can identify with your senses; an example of a hazard under the general duty clause would be broken glass on the ground. The general duty clause also requires all employees to “comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules.” Other standards of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that transition over to the lab standards are: possible skin or eye contact, standards which set Permissible Exposure Limits or PELS, and lab standards that require exposure monitoring and medical surveillance. PELS are legal limits that were set by OSHA in 1970 and require full compliance. If the PEL is exceeded then proper controls must be implemented to limit the worker’s exposure: personal protective equipment, shorter shifts, engineering controls. There are thousands of chemicals used in industries every day and OSHA does not regulate all of them, some have not even been tested fully. Another limit set by OSHA is the Threshold Limit Value, which control the concentration of substances in the air that workers are subject to day after day so there are no adverse health effects in the short or long-term. The standard is an average over an average eight hour shift for a forty hour work shift.  Another way that OSHA makes sure a worker is in compliance with a certain exposure is by calculating their TWA, or Time Weighted Average, which is when you take the workers exposure multiplied by the time exposed for each segment of time and then divided by the total time. OSHA also has standards for short term sampling called STEL, or Short Term Exposure Limit, which are typically 15 minutes long. However, these STEL standards are only published for compounds with very toxic effects with only acute exposures. OSHA also has ceiling limits implemented for those fast acting compounds that could be more hazardous to workers. Worker exposure should never exceed three times the TWA for no more than a total of thirty minutes for the entire work day.

The OSHA lab standards go deeper into the hazardous substances area with regulations. This is under OSHA Hazcom standards within the workplace. These include: reproductive toxins, carcinogens or cancer causing compounds, and compounds that cause high acute toxicity. For a compound to be regulated as a carcinogen it must be listed as a known carcinogen on the Annual Report on Carcinogens, listed as a group one carcinogen towards humans, and are known to cause significant occurrence of tumors in animals. Reproductive toxins are known to effect the reproductive systems in both males and females after repeated exposure. Chemicals are evaluated, assessed, and then implemented under OSHA. These are all defined under the Chemical Hygiene Plan.