In a meeting yesterday, the chair of our Chemistry Department safety committee asked me what constituted "adequate training" for a Chemistry Department in the regulatory sense. My answer as that, since the Chemical Hygiene Standard is performance based standard, there is no clear answer to this question (he asked it in terms of contact hours); the proof of an adequate training program is in a laboratory's "safety performance" as assessed on site. For good reasons, this is not a particularly satisfactory answer. In trying to think of a better one, I remembered that several times over the last 10 years various people and organizations have collected data from around the U.S. about what safety training various academic programs provide to their students. I wonder if anyone knows where the results of this might be published? (Yes, I think I contributed a paper about this to a CHAS meeting several years ago; no, the paper was never written up.) If I can't find any published information about this, I'll probably be back to the list next week with a request for information. Thanks for any help. - Ralph -- Ralph Stuart, CIH Environmental Safety Manager University of Vermont Environmental Safety Facility 667 Spear St. Burlington, VT 05405 rstuart**At_Symbol_Here**uvm.edu fax: (802)656-5407 Owner: SAFETY list (general discussion of environmental health and safety) LAB-XL list (performance oriented environmental regulation of laboratories)
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