The American Chemical Society and the chemistry community owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Task Force members who volunteered considerable time and energy to produce the original publication Identifying and Evaluating Hazards in Research Laboratories (PDF), the source material for this website.
The original publication was commissioned by the ACS Committee on Chemical Safety and produced in close coordination with the Division of Chemical Health and Safety in response to the Chemical Safety Board recommendations to: “Develop good practice guidance that identifies and describes methodologies to assess and control hazards that can be used successfully in a research laboratory."
The Task Force worked to achieve the following goals:
- To provide techniques to ensure hazard information is gathered and analyzed;
- To aid researchers in recognizing the value of input from others with varying experiences;
- To provide techniques that can be used for a variety of different types of activities (routine protocols, modifications to current research, or entirely new activities); and
- To consider the variable nature of research tasks by providing tools that help researchers recognize and respond to change—both large and small.
Task Force Members
- Kimberly Begley Jeskie
Task Force Chair, Committee on Health and Safety (CHAS) member
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN - Peter Ashbrook
CHAS member
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL - Dominick Casadonte
ACS member
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX - Debbie Decker
CHAS member
University of California, Davis, CA
- Laurence J. Doemeny
Former Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS) Chair
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Ret.), San Diego, CA - Robert H. Hill, Jr.
CCS chair
Battelle Memorial Institute, Atlanta, GA - Todd Houts
CCS member
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO - Ken Kretchman
CHAS member
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
- Robin Izzo
CCS, Laboratory Chemical and Waste Management Task Force Chair
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ - Samuella B. Sigmann
CHAS member
Appalachian State University, Boone, NC - Erik Talley
CHAS member
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY - Marta U. Gmurczyk
ACS Staff Liaison to CCS
American Chemical Society, Washington, DC
This collection of methods and tools for assessing hazards in research laboratories is based on the publication, Identifying and Evaluating Hazards in Research Laboratories [PDF]. The guide was published in 2015 by the Hazard Identification and Evaluation Task Force of the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Chemical Safety in response to a recommendation from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
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Email the Safety team at safety@acs.org