Developing a Safer Laboratory System

Compliance should be ensured with all relevant legislation and standards

Dr Suryasnata Das

Every institute needs to ensure the highest practicable standard of health and safety for employees, students and visitors and other persons working in their institute. Clinical laboratories are an integral part of every healthcare institute, so is laboratory safety. All reasonably foreseeable risks to health and safety in laboratory work should be identified, and management strategies put into place to eliminate or minimise such risks. Safety in the laboratory is the co-operative responsibility of human resources department, purchase department, finance department, management, civil and electrical department and laboratory.

The principles of risk management should be applied to all laboratory work, namely:

• Hazard identification, through inspection of the laboratory and associated project proposals.
• Risk assessment, through the review of health and safety information.
• Risk control, through providing appropriate facilities, induction and training.

Accountability

It has been recognised that the effective provision of safe work environments and safe systems of work places is the combined responsibly of laboratory staff, engineering staff, management and contractors. Policies should be drafted to assign different responsibilities to different individuals in the laboratory. Compliance should be ensured with all relevant legislation and standards, so that exposure of persons to health and safety risks arising from laboratory activities is avoided or minimised. Laboratory in-charge should ensure that effective supervision is provided and safe systems of work are provided, maintained and disseminated in their respective laboratories. Staff must follow these safe systems of work and report circumstances where laboratory work poses hazards that need to be addressed.

Laboratory Designing & Infrastructure

Designing the laboratory is a specialised activity. The design of the laboratory should be based on the kind of work and samples that would be processed. The civil, electrical and engineering departments and laboratory representatives should work as a team while designing the laboratory. Special care should be taken in designing the airflow and ventilation of the laboratory, so that hazards inside and outside the laboratory can be avoided. Separate areas should be marked for sample reception, processing and report dispatch. Sample reception and processing should be away from the office area. Proper fire safety measures like secondary exits, alarm systems and fire fighting equipment should be incorporated in the design.

Laboratory Safety Manual

Laboratory safety manual is seen as the first step in implementing safe systems of work for managing risks within a laboratory. It should include all the policies and guidelines to be followed in the laboratory including the personnel responsible for a particular work, site of work (eg biosafety cabinet), preparation at the site of work, equipment handling, personal protective wear to be used, sample processing and waste disposal. The manual should be provided to all the staff working in laboratory. Newly appointed staff should be made familiar with the contents of the relevant laboratory safety manual.

Facilities & Equipment

Equipment is the backbone of any laboratory. The maintenance and servicing of equipment is essential for the safety of the laboratory and avoiding accidents. Laboratories should be provided with appropriate safety equipment to handle different kinds of samples. For example, biosafety cabinets of different classes should be provided for various infectious agents depending on their biosafety level. Autoclaves should be provided wherever infectious waste needs to be disposed.

Human Resources

The laboratory should recruit trained personnel in the laboratory. The institute and laboratory head should ensure training of the staff periodically through continued education and workshops. It is also the responsibility of the institute to provide proper work environment and health facilities for the staff. The staff should be immunised against vaccine preventable diseases like Hepatitis B. The laboratory heads should emphasise on standard precautions to all staff. For the convenience of the staff, warning signs and labels should be put at various sites for the identification of hazards (for instance, radioactive substance). Posters should be put to increase the awareness about procedures like hand wash etc.

Waste Disposal

All potentially contaminated materials from the laboratory like cultures, personal protective wear, glass ware, plastics must be decontaminated before disposal or reprocessing. Decontamination of waste should be close to the point of generation as possible and should ideally be done before materials are removed from the laboratory area. Materials to be decontaminated outside of the laboratory must be placed in a properly labelled leak proof container. The containers to be sent outside should be packaged properly before transportation and the rules laid down by the local authorities should be followed. Radioactive waste should be handled with care and with proper protective wear.

Safety Strategies

Aerosol formation should be prevented as most laboratory accidents occur due to lapse in technique. Therefore, all laboratory equipment and procedures should be evaluated when put into use and periodically thereafter to ensure that opportunities for generation of aerosols are minimised. Practices that can result in spills (like hand-carrying tubes, vials, and bottles or improperly stacking racks or baskets) should be avoided. All tubes, plates, and other containers should be transported on carts in protected racks or baskets. A detailed written spill management and sharp injury management plan should be there in all laboratories.

In a nutshell, it is better to be safe than sorry. A team effort is required to make the laboratories a safe place. Email: suryasnata@yahoo.com

The writer is Consultant Microbiologist Jaslok Hospital Mumbai