Photographic Moment

Find Safety Girl’s Laboratory Safety Errors

BY DIANE POOLE (NCI) AND AMANDA VANDEVEER (NCI)

NIH hosts the annual "In Focus! Safe Workplaces for All" photo contest, which challenges anyone with a passion for photography to capture an image of workplace safety and health and share it with the Office of Research Services, Division of Occupational Health and Safety. One of the 2015 first-place winners, “Safety Girl, Find Safety Girl’s Laboratory Safety Errors,” was a photo by Diane Poole (recently retired from NCI), featuring NCI postdoctoral fellow Amanda Vandeveer as “Safety Girl.” The other first-place winner was a photo entitled “Hazmat” by Roger Weidner, an industrial chemist in the Office of Research Facilities.

The Safety Girl Way: Wearing safety glasses; hair is tied back; unexposed arms; gloves on both hands; closed-toe shoes; electrical strip is not overused; the cord and step-ladder (trip hazards) have been removed; the heater has been removed from the lab; the media bottle has been removed from the regular trash; the sharps container has been removed and properly placed (not shown); the liquid waste bucket has been placed in a secondary drip container and properly tagged; the fabric chair has been moved so that it is not used at the lab bench; Safety Girl’s pet cat “Poppy” has been removed from the lab.