What a CSB Safety Investigator does

The ACS Multimedia Lab has produced a video about one of the DCHAS members, Mary Beth Mulchahy, a PhD chemist who is now a safety investigator with the US Chemical Safety Board. The What Chemists Do short videos feature chemists and the diversity of careers in the profession. We hope the video content will be insightful to both aspiring chemists (students) and chemical professionals. mary beth

Mary Beth Mulcahy, Ph.D, is an investigator at the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Mulcahy doesn’t normally know what her day is going to be like at work. As an investigator at this federal agency, Mulcahy typically gathers evidence and witnesses at an incident scene. But her work goes beyond crunching data and analyzing numbers. Listen as Mulcahy shares her experience working at the CSB and what it takes for young professionals to be an investigator.

Visit www.acs.org/Industry to discover the various industry member programs at the American Chemical Society.

 

San Diego CHAS at a Glance and EC Agenda

The CHAS program for San Diego is summarized in the CHAS at a Glance PDF file available for download here: CHAS at a glance – San Diego Spring 2016 chas at a glance

The Executive Committee’s agenda book for the spring national meeting in San Diego on Sunday March 13 is available in PDF format from this link. All DCHAS members are welcome to attend; if you are unable to, feel free to send comments on the agenda items to the Secretary at secretary@dchas.org

Division of Chemical Health & Safety
Executive Committee ACS Spring 2016 Meeting

Sunday, March 13th
8:30 AM – 11:00 AM (Breakfast at 8:00 AM)

Hilton Gaslamp – Santa Rosa Room

Officer Reports (8:40am-9:30am)
Chair’s Report – John Palmer (see 01 Chair Report)
Past Chair’s Report – Debbie Decker (see 02 Immediate past chairs report)
Treasurer’s Report – Neal Langerman (see 03-Treasurers-Report)
Secretary’s Report – Ralph Stuart (see attachment 4)
Councilor Report – Bob Hill and Frankie Wood-Black (see 05 Councilors Report to CHAS SD)
Special Guests [9:30-9:40am – intro & short presentation plus questions/comments] (Ken Smith – Jason Spruell)

BREAK (9:45-9:55am)

Committee & Other Reports (10:00-11:00am)

Programming Committee (see 06 Programming report)
JCHAS Editor’s Report – Harry Elston (see 07 JCHAS Editors Report)
Government Relations Committee (see attachment 8)
Long-Range Planning Committee / Administrative Manual / ByLaws (see09 Long Range Planning Committee Report)

Cannabis Subdivision Update (see 10 CANN Report)
Strategic Plan Progress Reports (see 11 Educational Programming report)
Philadelphia Social Event
Awards Committee
Membership Committee (see 12 Membership report)
Policy Writing Team (see 13 Policy Statement Writing Team)

ACS Strategic Plan (see 14 ACS strategic plan 16)
Updates from the CHED Safety Committee and input from other Divisional Reps.

Learning Opportunity in Identifying Safety Barriers at the SD National Meeting

Traditionally, safety controls (barriers) have been identified as physical in nature—like a fume hood, glove box, or personal protective equipment—intended to separate and protect people and the environment from specific hazards. However, the success of physical barriers in a laboratory setting depends upon specific behaviors by the laboratory workers; these, in turn, are influenced by organizational policies and oversight and an organization’s explicit commitment to them. Consequently, to assure their effectiveness, the safety barrier concept has to be extended beyond physical safeguards to consider a variety of organizational and operational barriers. By expanding the scope of safety barriers to include system factors, it becomes clear that safety requires continual monitoring and response at many levels of an organization.

As part of its technical program at the San Diego national meeting, DCHAS will be offering an innovative, interactive technical session to help people across the laboratory community, including students, faculty, lab staff, research administration and Environmental Health and Safety staff gain experience in understanding the interplay of the protective barriers in the laboratory setting.

On Tuesday afternoon, March 15, Mary Beth Mulcahy, investigator at the Chemical Safety Board, will chair and Chris Boylan of Det Norske Veritas will lead a workshop entitled “Introduction to bowtie methodology for a laboratory setting”. Using real world examples from both the teaching and research laboratories, this workshop will help participants acquire skills in identifying how safety barriers in the laboratory interact and when those interactions can lead to safety failures.

bowtie

More information about this workshop can be found in this PDF document: Introduction to the Bowtie Methodology in the Laboratory Setting

In order to help us plan for the most productive audience session, please contact Mary Beth at MaryBeth.Mulcahy@csb.gov if you’re planning on attending.