From: Jarral Ryter <jryter**At_Symbol_Here**WESTERN.EDU>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety Showers, Drains and ADA Compliance
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 21:01:37 +0000
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 7d31bcf44532454c997bdfbadb4eb4b2**At_Symbol_Here**mail.wsc.western.edu
In-Reply-To <10DC9768-5F6B-498A-AF8F-56D8B548E76F**At_Symbol_Here**ilpi.com>


We have floor drainsÉ but the floor doesn't slope towards them as they seem to be in a high place. Physics and computer science below us seem to have gotten used to a drip drip here and there.

 

Jarral Ryter

Senior Chemistry Lecturer/Lab and Safety Manager

Western State Colorado University

 

970.943.2875

western.edu

jryter**At_Symbol_Here**western.edu

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU> On Behalf Of ILPI Support
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 2:10 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety Showers, Drains and ADA Compliance

 

Clearly, the solution is to install a floor decal with a *picture* of a floor drain on it so people *think* there's a floor drain.

 

Lack of floor drains didn't keep us from using a shower during an accident during grad school.  Sure was a neat way to determine that the building lists to one side about 3" because that's how deep the far wall flooded while the hallway side of the room was basically dry.

 

Visited a school not long after a two-lab fire on the upper floor of a maybe 5 story chemistry building.  Not sure if there were floor drains or if they had the capacity to deal with that kind of water output, but the water went through each floor all the way to the basement, taking out laboratory notebooks and other irreplaceable papers along the way until it hit and fried the NMR machine in the basement.  The "expense" of floor drains is a false economy that is valid only until the first time they are needed.  It's like all the young healthy folks without health insurance until they end up in the emergency room.

 

 

In related false economy safety news that parallels this discussion, the National Academy of Sciences, in a report funded by the Interior Department (see http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=25032 ), recommends that the agency work closely with the oil industry to establish standards to prevent spills from bolt failures on undersea safety equipment used in deepwater drilling (which is apparently a contributing factor in the Deepwater Horizon incident). 8 years on from that disaster, the industry apparently has no standards or rules that cover bolt inspections.  However, the Trump administration, intent in removing "burdensome regulations", has called for the removal of an Obama-era requirement for a third party to certify that such safety devices are "designed to function in the most extreme conditions to which it will be exposed and that the device will function as designed"; see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/trump-offshore-drilling.html  Guess they believe it can't happen again, although it's curious that the same administration has called for drilling off every state's coast except the one that is home to Mar-a-Lago.

 

The administration's goal here is to save maybe $20 million a year by running the risk of another Deepwater Horizon-level event versus doing things the right and safe way which might cost a bit of money but would prevent tens of billions of dollars in damages and a significant number of workers lives.  False economy on an even grander scale, alas.

 

BTW, the NAS report also states the government's standards "should promote an enhanced safety culture across organizations and disciplines - one that is reflected in work rules and encourages all levels of the organization to improve the reliability of undersea bolts."  Good to see someone calling for safety culture and sad to see that the industry apparently is still lacking one eight years after a horrible lesson apparently not learned.

 

Rob Toreki

 

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Safety Emporium - Lab & Safety Supplies featuring brand names

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On Mar 12, 2018, at 3:11 PM, Wayne Wood <wayne.wood**At_Symbol_Here**MCGILL.CA> wrote:

 

Emergency showers are seldom put to use in laboratory settings. Installing showers without drains practically eliminates the chance that someone will actually ever use them so why bother to install them; are they just decorations?

 

Pardon me for getting cynical but in this day and age of FAKE news maybe the answer lies in just installing FAKE showers.  No drain, no water supply, no plumbing whatsoever, just a FAKE installation. Or just a picture of an installation, scotch-taped to the wall. Think about all the money we could save! Of course being the professionals that we are we would have to FAKE our due diligence by way of:

 

FAKE testing and inspections

FAKE tags

FAKE signage

FAKE safety training

FAKE safety policy and protocols

And lastly, FAKE safety officers to pretend to do all this work

 

And please disregard this message, it is a genuine FAKE.

 

W.

 

Wayne Wood | Director, Environmental Health and Safety - Directeur, Sante´, securite´ et environnement| McGill University | 3610 rue McTavish Street, 4th floor | Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1Y2 | Tel: (514) 398-2391 

 

 

 

 

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilhelm, Monique
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2018 10:33 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety Showers, Drains and ADA Compliance

 

There are always so many questions about safety showers and eye washes.  I think that we need to have a symposium on themÉ.I will have to remember this for Orlando

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce Van Scoy
Sent: Thursday, February 1, 2018 6:07 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety Showers, Drains and ADA Compliance

 

Melissa,

Push for the drains!  Show the cost over time of having testing performed at the recommended frequency without them vs. having them.  My experience has shown when the drains were removed due to initial installation costs (proposed as "value engineering"), it wasn't too long after that they were screaming about the frequency of performing flushing/testing.  If memory serves, I provided a CDC reference about the eye-damaging bacteria that reproduce in stagnant pipes with the presence of chlorine.  The architects and accountants were not available later to justify or defend their "value engineering" decisions, but the initial construction cost did save a few dollars.  My recommendation is to push for the drains or define accountability standards to apply later, e.g., is installation cost v. recovery in 1-yr or 5-yr?

BruceV   

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of Suzanne Howard
Sent: Thursday, February 1, 2018 10:54 AM
To: 
DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety Showers, Drains and ADA Compliance

 

Hi Melissa,

We are in the process of designing a new science bldg and was told that we can't have drains for the safety showers and the eyewashes.  Our architects state the reason is that the size of the drains would have to be very large.....?  They also indicate that the cost for plumbing is too great.  Have not yet decided if EHS should push for drains or not, or, if it is even possible. 

Suzanne

 

-- 

Suzanne Howard

Director EHS

Wellesley College

300 Central Street

Wellesley, MA

781-283-3882

 

On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 10:21 AM, Melissa Anderson <mwanderson08**At_Symbol_Here**gmail.com> wrote:

Greetings Everyone,

 

We're working with architects right now to plan out chem labs for a new science building. We've asked for drains under the safety showers and were told that wouldn't be possible because in order to be ADA compliant and have drains, the safety showers would take up too much space- has anyone encountered such an argument? 

 

(Note, we're extremely constrained on space due to some very complicated politics I won't go into here, so making the labs bigger is not an option.)

 

Thanks,

Melissa Anderson

Instructor

Pasadena City College

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