Focus on biosafety during National Biosafety Month!
The American Biological Safety Association, International has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to promote national Biosafety Month this October.
The theme for 2018 is “Promoting a Culture of Biosafety and Responsibility,” and people are encouraged to use the social networking hashtag #getyourcultureon.
At Michigan Medicine, everyone is encouraged to use Biosafety Month as a time to focus on and reinforce their attention to biosafety and biosecurity standards.
For instance, the month could be used to:
- Catch up or get ahead on biosafety training
- Tackle that SOP you’ve been putting off
- Write to your PI or department chair to ask for support for that biosafety program idea you have
- Be a good biosafety role model for your lab and the one next door
- Talk up EHS’s non-punitive incident reporting system and provide lessons learned online at your lab and department meetings
- Don’t be humble — celebrate your safe research successes!
Biosafety Month provides an opportunity for biosafety professionals to demonstrate their value to the research community and general public by working to promote safe research and help cultivate a culture of safety.
Your participation will help to ensure research involving potentially biohazardous substances at U-M is conducted responsibly and safely.
Additional reminders for National Biosafety Month:
- Report incidents and near misses relating to research to EHS
- Schedule your annual BSL2 containment laboratory inspection by emailing BioSafetyInspections@umich.edu
Additional questions can be directed to EHS Biosafety at BioSafetyInspections@umich.edu, or the UMMS Office of Regulatory Affairs at sarlawso@umich.edu.
