Health and safety at work! LIMS is the basis
Laboratory managers are obliged to organize their areas in such a way that all legal requirements are met in the course of daily work processes. This requirement, which sounds so simple and obvious in theory, presents many laboratory managers with a considerable challenge. Because the problem lies - as often in life - in the detail. A basic problem is that the implementation of legal obligations is not the actual focus of a laboratory manager's work. For legally compliant operation in the laboratory, there is not just one law, regulation or technical rule on how, when, where and what has to be done, but numerous, partly overlapping regulations have to be observed, each of which defines individual aspects of overall responsibility.
Complex responsibility for laboratory managers
- Carry out instruction of the employees
- Perform and keep up to date risk assessment for laboratory activities
- Carry out inventory checks of hazardous substances and preparations held in stock
- Creating and keeping operating instructions up to date
- Carry out extinguishing exercises
- check workplaces for hazardous waste at least once a year and dispose of waste regularly
- Draw up general operating regulations for laboratory activities (e.g. clothing, personal protective equipment, hygiene, first aid, fire protection...)
- Draw up special operating regulations for activities in laboratories (e.g. handling spontaneously combustible substances, handling peroxides, handling acetylene, handling ionising radiation, drying solvents, working with vacuum, working with carcinogenic substances, handling burners, ...)
If one now further considers that many other work equipment and laboratory facilities also have corresponding test specifications, then the complexity of the tasks that have to be performed on a daily basis becomes clearly visible.
