> >I would really like to hear from legal experts on this entire issue. We in the safety profession can make a case for needing the information, but it is up to our legal colleagues to determine if we can legally get the information.

It has not been my experience that the legal staff in academic institutions get involved in operational decisions within the institution. Rather offices that are assigned responsibility to understand and implement ADA (i.e. facility design groups), FERPA (the registrar), HIPPA (the medical clinic) and other requirements develop an interpretation based on their professional understanding of the situation, which may not include any experience inside a laboratory or consideration of teaching issues there. I once took an internal auditor on a tour of a chemistry department I worked with to show her the safety progress we had made and she was aghast at the situations we saw; I considered those situations close to normal.

My point is that there is a much broader set of stakeholders that is involved in these decisions than the legal office. There have been recent CHAS symposia and publications on ADA compliance which have demonstrated that productive discussions and reasonable accomodations are possible in many situations that appear challenging at first. But getting to those accomodations requires significant outreach from the chemistry department and the EHS office to other stakeholders to address their preconceived notions of "hazardous materials" and the risk they present. Perhaps a course in "RAMP for non-science adminstrators" could be developed - the UCLA pregnancy policies Craig pointed to recently start down that path.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org

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