Safety Committee

AFNS Safety Committees
AGRICULTURE/FORESTRY CENTRE

AFNS North Campus Health and Safety Committee

The Department of AFNS North Campus Health and Safety Committee is composed of representatives from AFNS Faculty, Lab Managers, technologists from Ag/For building and representatives from Li Ka Shing and South Academic Building.

Membership includes the following representatives:

Dr. Urmila Basu : Committee Chair, Overall safety, Genomics Unit and Radiation Safety
Dr. Michael Gaenzle : Academic Representation, Biosafety
Dr. Kelvin Lien : WHMIS/Fire Safety
Heather Vandertol-Vanier : Biosafety/ Radiation safety
Ileana Strelkov (Plant Pathology) : Trust technician
Zhigang Tian: Trust technician
Jingui Lan : Trust technician
Ereddad Kharraz : Representative from SAB
Stephanie Ramage : Representative from Li Ka Shing

The Safety committee has the following responsibilities:

a) Ensure that the Department adheres to the regulations and guidelines as set out by Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) in the following areas: WHMIS, biohazards, fire safety, small chemical spills, radioisotopes, and transportation of dangerous goods.

b) Act as a resource for safety concerns at EHS.

c) Provide safety and regulatory compliance requirement information received from the University Safety committees to the Department.

d) Provide an ongoing safety education program for the staff and students of the Department.

Department Safety Information Seminar

All new staff and students are encouraged to attend Safety Information Seminar offered by Dr. Urmila Basu in the beginning of fall, winter or spring/summer terms. Subsequent to the general Laboratory Safety training sessions, researchers may need to take specialized safety training depending on the nature of their work. In addition, all laboratory personnel must complete the Unit-specific, Lab-Specific and Task-specific training, provided by the Principal Investigator (PI) or their designee.

Lab Inspections

Regular safety inspections of the Agriculture-Forestry Centre laboratories are conducted, which are coordinated by the On-Campus Safety Committee Chair. Sites off the main campus determine their own safety inspection frequency and format. The Safety Committee also provides support to all the labs in complying with safety requirements as suggested by EHS (For Lab inspection checklist, see Forms and Manuals).

Safety of Facilities

All new students and staff can contact Holly Horvath (780-492-2131, AF 4-10) for keys to the lab and office areas in Agriculture/Forestry Building.
Whenever there is no one left in a lab or other restricted area, doors should be closed and locked (if you are not sure if there is anyone in the area, lock the doors.
Hallway doors accessing Ag/For Centre lab areas are locked 24 hours every day and can be accessed using Onecard.