CHO Inspecting Labs and Facilities

A course for Chemical Hygiene Officers on running an inspection program and inspecting a lab

Every Chemical Hygiene Officer inspects. This course teaches both halves of that work: managing the program, meaning who inspects what, how often, against which rules and how every finding is closed, and doing the inspection, meaning preparing, walking a room in a fixed order, talking to the people in it and writing findings someone can act on.

It is written for Chemical Hygiene Officers in education and in industry. Every lesson teaches one step, then shows it twice, once in a school or district and once in a company or lab.

Eight modules, one inspection program

• Why Inspect, and What You Inspect Against: what an inspection is for, the OSHA, EPA, fire code and consensus standards you inspect against, and your Chemical Hygiene Plan as the source of the checklist.
• Building the Inspection Program: who inspects what, the kinds of inspection and how often each happens, and mapping your spaces and ranking them by risk.
• Before the Walk: fitting the checklist to the room, reading the history, planning the walk, and the yearly self-audit of the whole program.
• Walking a Lab: a fixed route, conditions and practices, talking to the people in the room, and recording a broken rule fairly.
• Storerooms, Waste and Shared Spaces: chemical storerooms, waste collection areas under EPA’s rules, prep rooms, gas cylinders, cold storage and shared classrooms.
• Checking the Safety Equipment: the equipment register, fume hoods between certifications, and test logs that prove each test happened.
• Findings, Reports and Follow-Up: ranking findings, writing findings someone can act on, the report, and chasing every finding to closed and checked.
• Running the Program All Year: trends and reporting to leadership, turning findings into training, records and the yearly review, and what your records show an outside inspector.

Each module ends with a Task and a set of “What you learned” flip cards. Each Task writes one part of your own Lab and Facility Inspection Program, and the final project assembles the parts into one program for your school district or your site.