Health and Safety

At Laboratoire Lorrain de Chimie Moléculaire, Health and Safety is everyone's business. Our policy is based first on the prevention of personnel and then on training and compliance with health and safety rules. The objective is to ensure a safe and good workplace for the people working in the laboratory, from the experimental protocol to the destruction of waste.

Safety / Training

♦ News entrants

In order to be informed of current health and safety rules within the L2CM, arrangements have been made for all new entrants. They have to go through the procedure as describe below:

 

♦ Staff training

With the collaboration of our training correspondent, an inventory of the health and safety training required by our staff is drawn up each year.  Thus, training courses such as electrical authorization, chemical risk, gestures and postures, autoclave authorization, electrical risk awareness and biological risk are regularly followed by our staff. Some of them can be set up specifically for our laboratory.

To date, our Laboratory has more than ten Emergency First Aiders at Work (EFAW).

Safety

The L2CM bas currently about thirty fume hoods, three Microbiological Safety Cabinets, three Laminar Flow Cabinets and two recirculating fume hoods. This collective protective equipment (CPE) has benefited from a major programme of upgrading to safety standards, particularly with regard to ventilation (2013).

 

Personal protection is mandatory: glasses, labcoats, gloves and masks for fine particles (silica). The Laboratory provides labcoats for each person and ensures their regular cleaning.

A single place is used for the storage of chemicals. Each product received is labelled by name, entered in our chemical databased (OpenEnventory) and then stored in safety storage cabinets with retention tank or in ATEX refrigerators/freezers by the person in charge of the chemical storage

In order to limit the purchase of chemicals, each product is shared between the different groups. A computer database (OpenEnventory) makes it easy to locate the chemical in the storage room, the borrower if necessary and specify the remaining quantity.

The distillation (to get anhydrous solvents) of classical solvents has been replaced by a MBraun solvent purification system (methanol, THF, toluene and diethyl ether) in order to avoid any risk of fire or explosion

– The Laboratory has hydrogen generators (Parker brand) for gas chromatography and low-pressure hydrogenation reactions.

As outdoor storage is difficult on our different sites, the laboratory has equipped itself with under-oxygenation detection for all rooms with gas bottles.

The Laboratory has all types of fire extinguishers (classes A, B, C and D), fire blankets, personal eye wash stations and portable safety showers

– All types of waste are treated at the Laboratory with a selective waste sorting: dirty glass, dirty chemically solid waste, used needles, silica, used solvents, chemicals to be destroyed…..

A powder weighing station (Safetech, mettler Toledo) is available on our SynBioN synthesis platform for maximum safety when weighing CMR products, cytotoxic products, active ingredients or nanoparticles.

Duties

– The Laboratory has a Health and Safety register on each site.

– The “Single Document” (Document Unique in french) of risk assessment (available on https://gpuc.univ-lorraine.fr) is updated every year and sent to ours administrative supervisions.

Safety Manager: Fabien LACHAUD
Phone: +33 (0) 3 72 74 56 71
Email : fabien.lachaud@univ-lorraine.fr