Among its other hazard information pages, OSHA has a basic list of laser resources that may prove useful to laser users.
Category: Policies/regulations
Lab safety-related laws, regulations, and JHU safety policies
OSHA electrical safety information
If you are using electricity of any sort, OSHA’s electrical information page is an excellent place to start for hazard information.
OSHA Compressed gases and equipment information
OSHA maintains a page with laws, regulations, good practices, and links to further information, all covering work with compressed gases and equipment.
NIH guidelines for research involving recombinant or synthetic DNA molecules
The NIH guidelines for research involving recombinant or synthetic DNA molecules are the basis for JHU’s DNA project registration and review procedures. Molecular biology researchers should be intimately familiar with this document.
Government agencies with lab safety information
Many government agencies have jurisdiction or interest in laboratory safety, and their websites often contain useful information.
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA: worker safety and health) - Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA: public health and the environment) - Maryland Occupational Safety and Health
(MOSH: Maryland’s representative for OSHA) - Maryland Department of the Environment
(MDE: public health & the environment; independent of EPA) - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC: biosafety) - Food and Drug Administration
(FDA: pharmaceuticals, lasers, and medical devices) - Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA: drugs of abuse and their precursors) - Department of Homeland Security
(DHS: chemical/biological weapons and their precursors) - National Institutes of Health
(NIH: research safety, particularly recombinant/synthetic DNA) - National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health
(NIOSH: worker safety and health; part of CDC, not of NIH) - Department of Transportation
(DOT: transportation of hazardous materials–biological, chemical, or radioactive)
Hopkins requirements for chemical handling
As a part of its compliance with occupational safety regulations, JHU has a set of Standard Operating Procedures for various types of chemicals (e.g., corrosives, compressed gases, carcinogens, flammables, etc.). Following these rules for chemical handling is mandatory.
Make sure you have the campus SOPs bookmarked in your browser if you use hazardous chemicals.
Health, Safety, and Environment guidance
Most people are unaware that the Department of Health, Safety, and Environment has both safety policies and safety guidance documents. The guidance documents provide more detailed technical information than the policies, and despite the name, compliance is mandatory.
Important guidance documents include: G07, on chemical use in labs; G09, on laser pointers; and G11, the escalation protocol for unaddressed safety violations.
How to find Hopkins safety policies
All JHU affiliates are responsible, as a condition of their affiliation, to follow all established safety policies.
JHU safety policies are not hosted directly at a Homewood URL; Hopkins uses a unified system Hopkins Policies Online (HPO), to store all relevant policies.
Use https://hpo.johnshopkins.edu/hse/ as a quick way to find JHU safety policies.
Note that JHU and JHMI share a common set of safety policies–the Johns Hopkins Joint Committee on Health, Safety, and Environment makes them. Several policies, though, are hospital-specific or have sections that are healthcare-only, so read carefully.