Safety and security in a higher education establishment laboratories using a checklist from the University of Illinois at Chicago

Abstract

In laboratories, teaching and research can be performed. To avoid accidents in laboratories and to ensure safety, there is a need and responsibility for periodic inspection as well as an assessment of users risk perception, which can be achieved by the use of checklists. In this work, the Chemical Hygiene Officer Laboratory Self-Audit Checklist from University of Illinois at Chicago was the elected template to apply in higher education establishment laboratories. This checklist was distributed to a sample of 128 users (59% women and 41% men). The objective of this work was to analyze the answers given by these users to investigate to assess risk perception coupled with risk assessment. Based on these results, women seem to be more aware of the risks than men. The themes with more positive risk awareness are Access and Personal Protective Equipment and the themes that require more attention are chemical hygiene officer and chemical hygiene plan. (c) 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London.