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Managing chemicals and hazardous materials is a critical safety concern. Improper storage, use, and disposal of hazardous materials can result in potentially life-threatening accidents. As a part of our continued commitment to the safety of all research staff, faculty, and students at CU Boulder (UCB); EH&S has assembled a thorough set of documents and handouts to aid in understanding and following the operating procedures for maintaining a proper inventory

Chemical Inventory Management

EH&S maintains and operates a chemical inventory database to facilitate safe chemical management and to ensure that all labs on campus are in compliance with various federal and local regulatory requirements. In addition to adhering to various regulatory requirements, chemical inventories must be provided to emergency responders in the case of an incident. The goal of this system is to serve as a collection site of chemical inventories from all research laboratories and maintenance shops on Boulder campus. 

Utilizing a user-friendly website and streamlined workflow, research personnel will be able to actively maintain their chemical inventory and search what items they have on a live basis. To better assist UCB researchers, EH&S has developed a new inventory workflow that utilizes barcodes and undergraduate students to streamline tracking and audit reconciliation for all labs across UCB campus.

EH&S’s goal is to take the burden of inventory management out of the hands of laboratory personnel and minimize the overall time and effort that laboratory personnel have to spend to maintain a proper inventory. The new workflow will have EH&S audit and maintain all chemical inventories for laboratories as long as labs ensure all new/incoming chemicals have a barcode attached and all disposed bottles have barcodes removed to prevent inventory bloat.

Current Inventory Project Status

EH&S has successfully completed the initial input/barcoding of all pre-existing chemicals on campus. All labs have been informed about the inventory tracking process and what specific responsibilities labs have moving forward. If your lab is new to Boulder, please contact Robert An (Robert.An@colorado.edu) with the Chemical Safety for a quick meeting and rundown of procedures and expectations. 

Actionable items labs can follow to assist this process:

Ordering

All labs are encouraged to continue using their preferred method for ordering chemicals (Marketplace, HHMI, RASI, NIST).

Disposal

EH&S requests that labs do their best to remove all barcodes off chemical bottles before rendering the bottle for disposal and place the barcode on the disposal sheet. It is extremely important to physically remove the barcode off the bottle and place on the Barcode Disposal Sheet. Failure to remove barcodes and purge digital inventory will lead to inventory bloat and inaccurate data. Once barcode disposal sheets are full, please mail them using campus mail to UCB-413 (similar to waste tag submittal process).

Audit

As part of the ongoing attempt to address the campus-wide issue of managing accurate chemical inventories, EH&S has plans to periodically audit lab’s inventories for them and minimize the burden that this regulatory requirement has on labs. Lab P.I.s and proctors will be contacted prior to the inventory audit team entering your lab through a blast email. The audit team will scan and verify what is physically present in your lab during the audit and input/barcode any new chemicals that don’t have barcodes. EH&S plans to conduct inventory audits for your building annually. All inventory work can be seen within under the "Chemtracker" tab of your labs profile. If your lab does not have any chemicals within the Chemtracker tab, it means that your lab does not have any chemicals associated with your lab. If you believe that this is an error or that your lab should have a chemical inventory present, please contact Robert An ASAP.