Lab Safety

University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) departments that use compressed gas cylinders must comply with a wide variety of laws and regulations, including those issued by Cal/OSHA, the California Fire Code and the City of Berkeley. This booklet provides general guidelines to help departments comply with those regulations. More specific information can be obtained from Material Safety Data Sheets and your department’s Job Safety Analyses (JSAs). Talk to your gas supplier about hands-on training and other useful safety information.

Compressed gas cylinders range from small...

This guide serves as an example and is presented with permission from LBNL. There are many types of pressure vessels so this serves as a template that allows you to replace the images to meet your specific needs.

Visual comparison guides are effective for certain applications, when for example, researchers may otherwise not know what is acceptable or not. We might state “look for excessive wear or corrosion” but these are partly qualitative descriptions that people can interpret differently. Excessive wear to one person may not be the same to another. The visual guide helps to solve...

Controlling a hazard at its source is the best way to protect employees. Engineering or administrative controls to manage or eliminate hazards to workers is the preferred option. When engineering or administrative controls are not feasible or do not provide sufficient protection, supervisors must provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to their workers and ensure its use. Attire when occupying a laboratory or shop containing hazardous materials or equipment.

UC Berkeley is committed to maintaining a healthy and safe workplace for all laboratory workers, students and visitors. This manual is an overview of the administrative steps necessary to obtain and maintain approval for the use of biological materials in laboratories, as well as a reference for good work practices and safe handling of other potentially infectious materials (OPIM).