Central Administration's Environmental Health and Safety unit supports operations across the University

Seven inches of snow is accumulating on city streets this wintry day. Public schools are closed as snowplows labor in a still-swirling blizzard. But Joseph Griffin, director of Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S), is at work.

"On a day like this, the University can be short-staffed," Griffin says from his office on Oxford Street. "So if something like a chemical spill were to happen, we're here to help out."

EH&S is a department within University Operations Services (UOS). In partnership with the decentralized Harvard community, its mission is to ensure that all schools and departments meet environmental and occupational safety regulations and maintain a safe work environment.

EH&S's 39 staff members work, for example, with the University's 1,500 labs and 4,000 research-related employees to ensure that the labs' toxic materials and wastes are handled in compliance with regulations promulgated by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

"Because our responsibilities include industrial hygiene, biosafety, radiation, food service inspections, and environmental programs," says Griffin, "EH&S must be creative in getting the word out to thousands of people at Harvard. This involves close contact and cooperation with personnel at all levels of the University."

Bertha Madras, associate professor of psychiatry and chair of the University Radiation Safety Committee, works at the Primate Center on the Southborough Campus of the Medical School. Madras, who acts as the Primate Center's radiation safety officer, stays abreast of changes in NRC radiation safety policies "with the help of EH&S," she says.

"As chair of the Radiation Safety Committee, I keep in close contact with the EH&S Radiation Protection Officer, Joe Ring," says Madras. "We discuss changes in policies, regulations, programs, and training."

"In a world of increasing regulation, we stay on top of emerging rules," says Thomas Vautin, associate vice president of Facilities and Environmental Services within UOS. "We lay out, for all the schools' compliance officers, what the regulatory issues are, what's changed, and where they can go for help."

Madras notes that in her role at the Primate Center, "I receive superb support from EH&S when issues arise at the Center." While incidents are few and far between -- fewer than one per year according to Madras -- "when an incident does occur," she says, "EH&S is here as fast as they can get somebody into a car."

From Enforcer to Consultant

EH&S hasn't always been looked upon as a resource to researchers.

"Years ago," Vautin recalls, "EH&S staff focused only on carrying out inspections and citing irregularities. No one would seek information from EH&S because they were afraid they would draw attention to a problem and suffer the consequences."

"The old EH&S scared away the schools," concurs Peter Bochnak, associate director of EH&S's Cambridge Campus. "It was not regarded as an ally but as an enforcer."

The department has seen fundamental changes since those days. Madras believes that the "defining moment" for EH&S occurred in 1986 when an unannounced NRC review resulted in lab shutdowns and bad publicity.

"This incident stimulated a major review of policy and practice and led to a restructuring of the EH&S," Madras recounts.

So by 1988, EH&S and other members of the University community formed two governing committees: an Operations Committee, composed of lab directors and other administrators from across the University; and a Policy Committee, made up of faculty and senior administrators.

"The point of both committees," Vautin explains, "is to foster an ongoing communication between EH&S and the schools," a collaborative process that was missing in the old EH&S model.

The two-way communication means that committee members who work daily with the regulated chemicals and materials have their say in creating safety and environmental procedures that address complex issues.

The close contact between the committee members and the researchers, says Griffin, "helps us to understand what works and what doesn't. Likewise," he adds, "as the law and related requirements don't always make intuitive sense, we can explain to them, 'These are the reasons why we have to do these things.'

"We are fortunate," continues Griffin, "to have a responsible client base. We find that we're increasingly called upon to collaborate on solving a problem before a crisis erupts." And while emergencies do happen, Griffin notes, "people are demonstrating a growing understanding that EH&S really is a resource to prevent emergencies from starting."

Web Training

While the committees convene to share the latest regulatory news, EH&S fact sheets, manuals, and classroom training sessions help to keep the sprawling University community up to snuff regarding safety procedures for hazardous materials and the like.

But annual refresher courses mandated by outside regulators can take too much of workers' time, so EH&S hit the Web.

"We don't have the staff, and the schools don't have the time to do endless classroom training," notes Vautin.

The new Web-based hazardous waste training program "allows researchers to pop up our training at any time of the day or night," Griffin says, "go through the refresher course, and take the exam."

Upon successful completion of the exam, the researcher's name is added to a database "available to managers, to determine who's been trained and who might need a reminder," Griffin explains.

Through this high-tech training site, reports Vautin, "600 [Harvard Medical School] faculty and staff received their refresher training within 48 hours."

Not surprisingly, Griffin reports that the online training has been "very well received."

Lines of Responsibility

As EH&S created its committees and moved into its current consultative role, says Vautin, "we had to develop clear statements about how accountability works. Ultimately, accountability for compliance with safety regulations lies with the schools."

"A key challenge EH&S faces in this regard," Griffin notes, "is to persuade busy people to integrate safety programs into their daily routines, rather than see them as add-ons to their existing duties."

To help keep the lines of responsibility clear, compliance officers were appointed by each of the school's Deans. These 19 officers work closely with EH&S staff to keep their respective domains safe.

"The compliance officers play a key role in implementing safety programs," notes Griffin. "So one of our jobs at EH&S is to make sure they have the tools and information they need, and to help them tailor the University's safety programs to fit their particular situation."

"We seek to hire really good communicators," Bochnak notes of the EH&S staff members who work on-site in the labs where biohazardous materials and chemicals are used. "We want to make this a winning situation for everyone."

Madras feels that it is. "Environmental Health & Safety's philosophy is to work with individuals to improve standards and to alert the responsible individuals to new issues as they emerge," she relates. "They really do a superb job."