Equipment and Tool Safety

Providing resources and guidance for the safe use of tools by UC Berkeley personnel.

Duwon Choi

Safety Specialist
Workplace Safety

Labs and Research

Providing support, in the form of risk assessment, review, consultation(link sends e-mail), training, and the necessary resources and guidance for research at UC Berkeley.

Training

The EH&S training team creates, delivers, and tracks health, safety, and environmental training for all faculty, staff, and students.

Electrical Fire Caused by Heat Gun Connected to Power Strip

March 6, 2025
Office of Environment, Health, and Safety
What happened?

A small fire broke out in a laboratory in the Department of Physics when a service technician plugged a heat gun into a power strip that was plugged into an isolation transformer. When a transformer is overloaded, the transformer can experience high operating temperatures, causing it to overheat. In this case, the overheated transformer caused a small fire to break out.

Fortunately, there were no injuries and damage was very minimal. The service technician notified the lab manager as soon as they noticed smoke. The Lab Manager...

Welding and Hot Work Program

Office of Environment, Health & Safety
2024

The UC Berkeley Hot Work Program provides procedures and supplemental information for welding and other hot work on campus. This program is designed to prevent injuries, prevent fire, control hazards, and to ensure compliance with Cal/OSHA safety regulations and the California Fire Code. The procedures outlined in this program must be followed by staff who perform welding and other hot work on UC Berkeley property.

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Job Safety Analysis

Job Safety Analysis or JSAs describes job tasks in step-by-step fashion, identifies associated hazards at each step, and outlines proper hazard controls that minimize the risk of injury or illness to the individual(s) performing that task.

Getting Started with Job Safety Analysis (JSA)

How do I write or find a JSA? The objective of providing this library is to:

Improve safety awareness among staff Decrease injury rates Make effective JSA resources available to the entire UC Berkeley campus

Ladders

Office of Environment, Health & Safety
2021
Ladder Safety Program

UC Berkeley has developed this Ladder Safety Program to manage the safe selection, procurement, safe work practices, inspection, inventory tracking and record keeping of all ladders. The Ladder Safety Program applies to any department on campus, at field stations, or on leased property where any type of ladder three (3) feet or more in length/height is used. Roles and responsibilities for safe use of ladders by employees (including temporary employees and graduate students performing research related activities in field stations and remote research facilities) are...

Crane/Hoist Safety Program

Office of Environment, Health & Safety
2012

The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) owns many cranes and hoists ranging from fractional ton chain-falls, come-a-longs and chain-hoists, to multi-ton overhead cranes. This Program assures compliance with Cal/OSHA regulations for Crane/Hoist Safety.

Rooftop Safety Plan

Office of Environment, Health & Safety
2020

This plan is a source of information for workers that will perform invasive or non-invasive work on roofs of UC Berkeley buildings. These are general guidelines to help you work safely in and around vent systems on the roof.

Rooftop Work Safety Plan Checklist

Office of Environment, Health & Safety
2020