Safety, Health and Environmental Policy

The Department of Chemistry is committed to the provision of a safe and healthy working, training and learning environment for all its faculty members, nonacademic staff members, students and visitors. The Department aims to prevent any accidents from occurring and will take all possible steps to make the Department a safe workplace. Where reasonably and practically possible, the Department is committed to:

1. Safety and Health

Making every effort to ensure health and safety in all phases of teaching, research, and in the development and commissioning of equipment/experiments and facilities. In this  respect, we will identify all safety and health hazards and review constantly safety and health policies, rules and guidelines to reduce, if not eliminate, any hazards present. We will ensure that all faculty members, nonacademic staff members, students, contractors and visitors take it as a personal responsibility to prevent injury to themselves and/or their colleagues.

2. No Accidents and Injuries

Making every effort to achieve a safe and healthy working environment.

3. Environmental Protection

Making every effort to minimize and defuse wastes and emissions so as to preserve the local environment and also to save energy and natural resources in order to ensure that the global environment can be protected.

4. Conformance with Laws and Regulations

Complying with all relevant University and legal requirements in relation to safety, health and environmental policies.

5. Education and Training

Establishing and promoting safety and health awareness by offering both in-house
or external training courses, and communicating the importance of such awareness to prevent accidents and injuries.

6. Continual Improvement

Establishing and implementing a management system to ensure health and safety in our activities as well as to protect the environment, and continually improving this system at all levels of our organization.

Prof Wong Ming Wah, Richard
Head
Department of Chemistry

We, the undersigned, pledge our support for the Safety, Health and Environment Policy.

Standard Operating Procedures and Guidelines

OSHE has also developed University wide safety and health procedures that staff, students and contractors are to comply with. These SOPs can be downloaded here:

For Staff: https://staffportal.nus.edu.sg/staffportal/portal/safety-security-and-sustainability.html

For students: https://myportal.nus.edu.sg/studentportal/safety-and-security/all/

Risk Assessment SOP

A risk assessment would be required for all new lab-based research or teaching projects. For non-lab based projects, a declaration by the PI to be submitted to ORE, through the HOD is required.

• Declaration form (https://aserv.nus.edu.sg/osh/nus_manuals/sop/OSHE-F-RA-03.pdf)

Only the risk assessments of approved or shortlisted projects need to be submitted for review by the Institution Biosafety Committee or the Institution Lab Safety Committee through OSHE. OLS or ORE will be inform you when you are to submit the risk assessment forms. PIs are however strongly encouraged to conduct the risk assessment at the project design stage so that appropriate budget can be set aside to implement the control measures for safety, health and waste disposal.

• Risk Assessment Submission (https://inetapps.nus.edu.sg/osh/portal/ra_submission.html)

The effective date for the risk assessment SOP is 1 Dec 2004.

Accident and Incident Reporting

All accidents and incidents are to be reported to OSHE via the online reporting system.
(https://inetapps.nus.edu.sg/osh/portal/eServices/ehs360_aims.html)

OSHE will route the information to the respective Faculty Safety Officers / Committee for further investigation.

Laboratory Door Signage

The signage (https://wws.nus.edu.sg/workplacesign/labsign.aspx) should be posted outside the lab