July 15, 1995

fill out "alarm notices" and post stickers on laboratory doors? Several years ago an alarm went off at night in a dark, unattended laboratory where an investigator worked with an extremely toxic gas. University Police were unable to locate anyone who worked in the lab, and called the fire department. Fire department personnel would not enter the laboratory without knowing the hazards they faced. Consequently the fire department, University Police, and ORS were tied up for more than an hour until someone from the laboratory arrived and revealed that the alarm was a paper-out alarm on a printer, not a toxic gas alarm! After that episode University Police, the administration, ORS, Facilities Management, and the Chemical and Biological Safety Committee worked together to develop the policy requiring investigators to provide information about all alarms in laboratories. The expectation was that implementation of the policy would result in tying up fewer resources, decreasing risk to responders, terminating incidents quickly, and protecting research through early notification of critical equipment malfunctions when a laboratory is unattended. Therefore, your cooperation protects both your work and the persons who respond to incidents. Call us if you need an "alarm packet" for your laboratory.