What is the safety concept
The safety concept is a document provided by the user which describes in detail how the experimental plan is going to be executed and how the employed setup/sample environment and potential hazards are going to be handled safely (e.g. if using the hot-air blower, high temperature is a potential hazard; in order to handle this safely, the experiments will take place inside the experimental hutch with nobody around, and high temperatures will only be applied remotely after searching the hutch and activating the door interlock; no personnel will re enter the hutch, until the experiment has been brought to room temperature). It MUST ALSO be stated if the treated chemical substances are dangerous (toxic, irritant, radioactive, polluting, etc.) and IF SO, how they will be handled in the laboratory (e.g. if samples are toxic, they will be handled with personal protection equipment under a fume hood) and the beamline (e.g., chemicals are always confined in a safe containement).
The safety concept must contain an assessment of potential accidents that may occur during the experiments and how they will be prevented (e.g. if an employed mixture of chemicals or an in situ reaction is potentially explosive in contact with moisture, the substances must be handled in a glove box and properly sealed in an adequate container of an adequate material before extracted from the glovebox). The user must guarantee that the experiments are safe and it should be clear what to do in worst case scenarios as in all other dangerous cases.
The safety concept is checked by the beamline personnel in advance and has to be approved by the DESY safety before the experiments starts or even before you come to the campus, especially if you intend to bring dangerous materials or equipment (e.g. high-pressure cells, lasers, radioactive substances, etc.). The concept should be sent to the local contact together with the technical assessment form AND uploaded in the DOOR system at least 6 weeks prior to your beamtime.
Who has to make a safety concept
EVERY USER MUST PRESENT A SAFETY CONCEPT, AND with more emphasis:
- Users which treat toxic, radioactive or other dangerous substances
- Users which use dangerous materials (for instance, setups with Beryllium parts)
- Users which deal with elevated pressures (above 1 bar)
- Users which deal with low pressures (below 1 bar or any other kind of vacuum)
- Users which use heating or cooling setups
- Users which use inert gases at elevated pressures or non-inert gases at any pressure
- Users which bring setups with own motors
- Users which bring any kind of light source: Lasers, LEDs, mercury lamps, etc.
- Users which bring own setups in general and have not been at the beamline before
- etc.
Safety concept template (Click here to download: P021_Safety_concept_template.docx)
The safety concept is a free written document, without a given form. When writing the safety concept, keep in mind it does not need to include the overall goal of the experiment or how you wish to treat the data after ended beamtime. It must, however, include a technical description of all types of experiments you wish to do including details of the materials and the conditions it will be exposed to. As such the safety concept should at least cover the following points:
- Describe experiment and setup. If possible use also pictures, so that the beamline personnel and DESY safety can understand what you want to do
- Describe how to handle the setup and risks involved
- Describe the studied substances and their hazardousness
- Explain which parts of the experiment are done at the beamline and which ones in for example the chemistry laboratories
- Describe how you guarantee that the setup is working correctly (for example in a gas experiment, you will need to perform leak tests with an inert gas, before the gas lines are filled with toxic gases)
- Describe all possible worst-case scenarios and how to avoid them
Further questions?
In case of further questions, please contact your local contact or for general questions the DESY safety managers directly: photon-science.safety-managers@desy.de
Attachments:
P021_Safety_concept_template.docx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document)
P021_Safety_concept_template.docx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document)
P021_Safety_concept_template.docx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document)