Dear All,
The County Hazardous Materials and Waste group is scheduled to inspect at least one of the following SoM building(s) on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. Your building may be involved but I will not know until Wednesday morning which building(s) will be chosen. As soon as I know, I will email the selected building(s) to notify our arrival. Participating with me in the inspection will be the county inspector and Stanford EHS representatives.
| 855 California |
| 3165 Porter (2nd floor only) |
| 1701 Page Mill |
| 3172 Porter |
| 3174 Porter |
| 3160 Porter |
Please review the website Inspections, Compliance and Research Operations to ensure a successful inspection of your responsible area, http://med.stanford.edu/medfacilities/safety-guidelines-resources/inspections-compliance-and-research-ops.html. Also helpful is the Chemical Safety website, http://med.stanford.edu/medfacilities/safety-guidelines-resources/chemical-safety.html.
Thank you for keeping SoM Safe and Compliant. Please contact me if you have any questions. I am happy to assist your laboratory with any laboratory safety compliance needs.
Hazardous Materials & Waste Inspections
Santa Clara County Hazardous MaterialsCompliance Division conducts VERY THOROUGH hazardous materials and waste inspections on the Stanford campus and in the School of Medicine.
Research labs and other areas storing or using chemicals and generating chemical waste should always be ready for these inspections. The agency is verifying that proper chemical storage/waste management and good lab practices are followed.
Remember: Poor housekeeping always invites closer scrutiny by inspectors.
• Keep labs, especially fume hoods, floors, chemical storage cabinets and table tops, clean and uncluttered.
• Clean up spills and their detritus (crystallized residues) as soon as possible.
How To Prepare Your Lab for Inspection
• The inspection includes ALL areas where chemical and/or chemical waste containers are stored or in use. This includes chemical storage shelves/cabinets, refrigerator/freezers, areas around fume hoods, instruments/equipment using chemicals, and individual workstations.
• Review previous regulatory agency inspection findings cited in your lab and self-inspection reports as a starting point. Check that all documented deficiencies have been corrected.
• Review information on Chemical Segregation and Storage https://ehs.stanford.edu/forms-tools/stanford-storage-groups
• Engage the lab in the inspection process – ALL laboratory personnel should be prepared to answer questions regarding items observed in their work areas and may be asked to identify constituents in containers and lab processes.
• IMPORTANT. Ethidium Bromide Gel Electrophoresis: ensure that gels being disposed into the regular trash meet the 0.4% by weight regulatory cut-off quantity. Any gels higher in ethidium bromide percent and all tips and disposable items contaminated with ethidium bromide must be disposed as hazardous waste.
• Lab equipment and processes generating chemical waste – Ensure that collection containers are properly labeled, incompatible materials segregated and stored in secondary containment.
-Ensure the accumulation time period for hazardous waste items are less than 9 months. If a date is observed to be older than this, submit a waste pick up request to EH&S immediately specifying that the waste is older than 9 months in the comments.
-To generate a hazardous waste tag go to wastetag.stanford.edu
• Chemical Containers – Ensure containers are properly labeled, closed, and stored appropriately.
• Chemical Inventories will be verified either during the lab inspection or overall facility review.
– Do the actual chemicals present in labs match what is reported in the Life Safety Box (LSB) and reported in ChemTracker? See your lab’s ChemTracker account to verify. LSB printouts are annually posted by EHS and request new printouts for rooms where an inventory was not previously present.
• Glass Recycle Boxes should be used for uncontaminated empty glass bottles. However other debris such as Pasteur pipets which are considered sharps, plastic tubes, labware, gloves, trash and most importantly PARTIALLY FILLED CHEMICAL CONTAINERS are not to be placed into Glass Recycle Boxes. Please ensure that all glass bottles are truly EMPTY as outlined in the Empty Container Decision Tree, https://ehs.stanford.edu/forms-tools/empty-container-decision-tree
• Self-Inspection records including the BioRAFT quarterly General Laboratory Inspection, Shop Area and Monthly Hazardous Materials Storage Area checklists may be reviewed by the inspector during the inspection.
– Are the self-inspections accurately completed to reflect actual conditions, noted deficiencies documented as corrected and forms available for review in BioRAFT? 3-years of self-inspections must be present in BioRAFT. Past self-inspections can be scanned to pdf and added to the Documents tab.
– Forms are compared with a list of rooms identified as chemical storage locations in ChemTracker. Labs should note details and include corrective actions taken.
• Universal Waste guidelines are found here: (https://ehs.stanford.edu/topic/waste-disposal/universal-waste). Ensure your lab and department are following the guidelines. Ensure all universal waste containers are tightly lidded at all times except when in direct use. If you did not receive this email directly and would like to subscribe to the mailing list, please complete this form.