Basic safety protocols
The beamline experimental hutches and peripheral laboratories are all potentially hazardous areas. We ask that you work safely at all times. Food and drink are not permitted in the hutches or labs. You may have food and drink in the control cabins, but please be realistic and put all waste in the control cabin bins.
A safety induction will be provided by your local contact, following PSS training and before your experiment starts. Please follow all guidelines. If oxygen depletion alarms sound in the experimental hutch, contact beamline staff or the Experimental Hall Coordinators if out of hours for advice. The hutches also present other hazards, including electrical devices, trip hazards, and moving mechanical components. Please be aware of these hazards, and work with your own and your colleagues' safety in mind at all times.
Experimental Risk Assessment (ERA)
The User Office will contact the Principal Investigator on the experiment proposal in advance of beamtime to request that an Experimental Risk Assessment is completed. The ERA must be submitted to the User Office three weeks in advance of beamtime. Failure to meet these timescales may result in beamtime being cancelled.
The Experimental Risk Assessment must be completed for each visit, giving specific details of the sample, equipment and hazards associated with the experiment. You must include all samples on the ERA, and inform the beamline team and User Office if there are any changes. Samples not on the ERA will need to be assessed separately by the Diamond Safety office, and may not be permitted on site.
Upon receipt of the completed ERA, the Diamond Health and Safety team will review the information and assign a safety grading for the experiment, as follows:
- Red - experiment needs close supervision
- Yellow - experimental needs monitoring at the beginning of the experiment
- Green - no restrictions
The safety classification of each experiment will be clearly displayed outside the beamline. The Experimental Hall Coordinators will visit each beamline to ensure that everything is running smoothly. The regularity of these visits will depend on the classification of your experiment.
COSHH and MSDS
MSDS forms for all the chemicals present in Lab 12 are kept electronically by both the beamline team and the Safety Office, and are also available in hard copy form in the lab itself. Please let your local contact know if you need the MSDS forms.
All sample preparation procedures carried out in Lab 12 should be listed on the ERA, as the ERA must contain details of all the samples that will be analysed at Diamond. If you plan to use Lab 12 for more than simple preparation (e.g. mounting samples in holders), then please discuss this with your local contact, so beamline staff can ensure that the correct risk assessments for laboratory work are carried out. You may need to fill out a more detailed risk assessment form for this work.
Risk assessments for laboratory work need to be printed out in hard copy and posted on the outside of the lab door. A clear document holder is mounted on the door for this purpose. Please discuss any risk assessments with your local contact, or with the Experimental Hall Coordinators out of hours.