Hi all,
Last week I was notified of serious recurring safety issues in the teaching labs related to biohazard waste and chemical safety including labeling of reagents and solutions.
I want to remind everybody that safety is a priority and each one of us deserves to work in a safe environment and is accountable for leaving their workspace clean and ready to use for the next person.
Angie does a wonderful job at training TAs about lab safety but it seems that this is not enough... We are thinking of ways to address these safety issues, which seems to be a problem for some years now. I just wanted to let you know what we are working on this. In the meantime, if you are an instructor, please work with your TAs and remind your TAs to follow Angie's instructions and to be proactive at ensuring that we have a safe place to work. If you are a TA, please take your job seriously and make sure that your workspace is clean and safe to use before you leave. If you are an undergraduate student and you see a safety hazard, please let us know. This is everybody's responsibility! And we are all accountable for things that go wrong (and believe me, they will go wrong if we continue on this path)!
In summary, if you see something in the labs that doesn't look right (unlabeled bottles, overfilled biohazard waste cans, etc.) please let us know. This is not to blame anybody; it is only to ensure everybody's safety. We are lucky to have somebody like Angie to help us with the labs, so please work with her, listen to her, follow her advice to keep our workspace acceptable and safe. Working as a team will make things better and easier for everybody.
Please don't hesitate to contact me, Angie, or Jayne if you have any questions about this.
Thanks, Silvana
[University of Nebraska – Lincoln] Silvana Martini, PhD Professor, Department Head University of Nebraska-Lincoln Food Science & Technology Lincoln, NE 402-472-5267 Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aocs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/155... > Fellow of the American Oil Chemists' Society Past President of the American Oil Chemists' Society (2022-2023)<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.aocs.org__;!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU!Aa6kh3V... >
