Hi, my name is Puleng Moshele,
and I'm a research assistant with the METPHAST Program.
In this series, we will be exploring different potential hazards in various workplaces.
In this video, I have a tour of a university industrial hygiene
laboratory to talk about some of the potential hazards.
Featured in this video is a university research professor and
a PhD student.
I'm Pete Raynor, I'm a professor in the School of Public Health
at the University of Minnesota. I teach occupational hygiene,
and my research expertise is in
exposures to aerosol particles, airborne particles in workplaces,
and most of my research
in the laboratory has involved
generating, and then doing tests with aerosols to understand
their physical properties, understand how to sample them
from the air better, understand how to control them and intervene
in order to reduce worker exposures to these aerosols.
A lot of these aerosols that we work with have
different hazardous properties. I've worked a lot with semi-volatile aerosols that include
oils and pesticide aerosols.
I've worked with biological aerosols, viruses and bacteria,
and as well as with nanoparticle aerosols.
So, there's a lot of hazards associated
with those in the laboratory for the students, and faculty, and staff
who might be conducting experiments.
So, one hazard that we have in
this space is this gas cylinder,
which is properly attached to the bench here,
but it creates a very narrow walk-way.
So, it makes it hard if there was an emergency
it could be dangerous to exit by. There's also another spot
along the floor here where there is a cord
going across from the electrical outlets to
this chamber, and we have properly
put a cover over the cord and have attached it to the ground,
but that is another potential hazard for tripping
if you are walking through this space.
The gas cylinders are properly attached to the benches.
You have this clamp that goes on the bench and then the
straps that go around the tank, and this tank has a
regulator on it in order to regulate the pressure,
and that regulator will keep the gas from leaking out,
and when you are using the tank frequently,
it's ok to have the regulator on it as long as it's strapped down.
This tank, which is not being used yet,
has a cap on it that
protects the valve at the top of the tank
when it's being transferred. So, if this tank
wasn't strapped and it fell over for some reason
and this cap wasn't in place, then the valve could be knocked off,
it could become a projectile because of the high pressure in the tank,
and all sorts of injuries could potentially occur.
So, two things in order to try to keep yourself safe
when using gas cylinders are to make sure it's capped,
particularly when it's being moved,
and also when you receive a tank, to strap it in
so it does not fall over and present dangers.
In our laboratory, we have a number of hazardous materials the we work with
in our experiments looking at aerosols.
We have some semi-volatile chemicals like oils and pesticides,
and we also handle powders
and then suspensions of nanomaterials. So, all of these can be
inhalation hazards and even dermal hazards.
Many of these hazardous agents we store and work with in laboratory hoods like this one,
and this laboratory hood is,
at this point, very crowded. It's overcrowded and there's really no
workspace in this hood and it should not be this way.
So, what we have in here, some of the issues, we have a gasoline can
that has some gas in it.
We have a number of containers with toluene,
we have some needles here that could be in the way of working,
and so this laboratory hood is too crowded to actually do the work
that we need to do. So, before we would do any work in here
we would need to clean this out, store these chemicals
safely elsewhere, and then create a workspace that would be safe
and easy to work in.
So, one of the hazards that we face at our lab
is handling of powders, and you can experience that
when you are trying to weigh them out to get the correct amount for an experiment.
So, if you're doing some weighing, you're
transferring some material from a container
into maybe a weighing boat, and there's a possibility that
this could lead to an exposure if this were a particularly
lightweight material that could become airborne.
So, in the process of weighing, we have
concerns that if there's something particularly toxic
or particularly small like a nanomaterial,
that we may need to contain this microbalance within
some sort of ventilated enclosure, or even within a laboratory hood.
I'm working with a test dust now that isn't particularly toxic,
it's made of clay, so I don't need to worry about that too much, but in other
situations you may need to be a lot more careful with you're handling of powders.
So, because we study the properties
and behavior of different kinds of aerosols in our laboratory,
we have to be able to generate aerosols intentionally,
and this can create hazards for us. So, we have devices like this one.
This is a nebulizer. We put high pressure air into the
apparatus through this tube, and then an aerosol is created
that comes out this opening, and we can place the nebulizer
into this apparatus and
the aerosol flows through the apparatus. Air is moved
by a vacuum pump, and we can conduct different tests
using different types of air samplers to try to understand
how they perform. Maybe even test filtration media
to see how affective they are, and in this apparatus
we've tested liquid aerosols.
We've tested microbiological aerosols.
We've tested nanomaterials generated with something different than this apparatus,
an electrospray aerosol generator, but they all
can potentially create hazards, and so we have secondary containment
around our apparatus. We can close this all up
and it's ventilated, and so we can make sure
that we're doubly protected from exposures to these aerosols
while we're conducting experiments.
I'm Hannah Kaup. I'm a Ph.D. student and research assistant
here at the University of Minnesota Environmental Health Program.
My work primarily down here is with the Exposure Science
and Sustainability Institute.
One of the tools we primarily use in ESSI is our environmental chamber.
In our chamber, we can simulate and measure exposures
to answer questions from industry.
There are a number of hazards
that go along with using our chamber. We consider
it a confined space, and that's because there is only one
exit and entrance into the chamber itself.
Ways that we can keep ourselves safe while
working with the chamber is we always work in pairs when we are down in the lab.
That's so we can always let somebody know when we're entering
and exiting the chamber. So, in case there was an emergency
or an accident there would be somebody close by
and somebody that would be checking in on us.
Our work within ESSI also changes quite a bit, and so our hazards within the chamber can change,
and so we need to be aware if we're working with a hazardous
chemical where there might be an inhalation exposure. So, do we need to wear
a respirator when we go into the chamber? We also
use quite a few instruments, and so are there a number of power cords
or instruments on the floor that could pose a trip hazard while we're inside the chamber?
And, so, just relatively being aware of our surroundings
and being aware of the dangers that are inside the chamber itself.
Ways that we can keep other people safe
that might not be working on the same project as us,
we post signs on the door
which tell people not to enter, and also that there's
an experiment going on. If there was an experiment actually
going on, we would list our hazards that are inside the chamber.
So, what chemicals are we using, is there a shock hazard,
is there a trip hazard, things like that, and then in case of an emergency,
so if there was a chemical spill, or a fire, or if somebody felt like something wasn't
going right inside the chamber, they would have a contact number
to get a hold of one of us.