Re: Spills and Emergency Response

["Sue M. Dupre" <dupre@arundel.Princeton.EDU>]

Vas,

We have an emergency response kit we designed ourselves already set 
up in a couple of small trunks, but to the best of my memory, we 
haven't had an incident since I've been here (for 19 years) that 
required the use of our emergency kit.  This kit is designed for 
large scale incidents (it's got rope, cones, flashlights, wipes, film 
badges, boots, tyvek suits, gloves, bags, absorbent paper, lots of 
other similar stuff).  

How many of us HPs respond and what we take with us depends on 
the information supplied to us by the worker or by Public Safety.  If 
we're led to believe that it's a major uncontained spill, then one of 
us HPs and an HP tech is likely to take a first look at the situation.  
For a smaller incident, probably just one person will respond.  For 
my initial response I usually bring gloves (because I can't count on 
finding Large size gloves in the labs), shoe covers, lab coat, a roll of 
"Contaminated" tape, a packet of wipes for wipes surveys, and the 
appropriate survey meter(s.

We expect our Authorized Users and radiation workers to do the 
actual cleanup.  Generally we're there on the scene during the 
cleanup:  to define the extent of contamination, to handle cases of 
personal contamination, to provide cleanup advice, to do post cleanup 
surveys, etc.

Feel free to call if you'd like additional information.

Sue Dupre

Sue M. Dupre, Health Physicist

Office of Occupational Health and Safety
Chemical Sciences Building/Forrestal Campus
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544-0710

E-mail: dupre@arundel.princeton.edu
Phone:  (609) 258-6252
Fax:    (609) 258-1804