CHEMICAL PROCUREMENT, TRANSPORTATION AND INVENTORY

Chemical Procurement Procedures

All personnel who are responsible for ordering chemicals must:

• Complete the hazard review section of the Purchase Requisition.
• Ensure the EH&S Division review and approve materials such as toxic and pyrophoric gases, selected reactive (unstable) chemicals and radioactive substances.
• The Procurement Department maintains a list of restricted items. If you  order hazardous materials you are to consult this list and contact EH&S for the necessary review and approval.
• Note: If you set up a blanket order for the purchase of hazardous chemicals, you need to obtain approval from EH&S for each release against that order (i.e., for each subsequent purchase of restricted items).
• Please limit chemical purchases to the minimum amount you need to conduct your activity. 

As indicated previously, information on hazards of chemicals can be found in Material Safety Data Sheets.

Transportation of Hazardous Materials

Hazardous materials can only be transported by the Transportation Department or a DOT authorized carrier (except as outlined below). Transporting hazardous materials by employees in public transportation (such as the shuttle bus) or in private or government vehicles, is not permitted. This is to minimize risk to Lab employees and the public. This also ensures that the regulatory requirements for packaging, manifesting and placarding are met. 

For the transportation off-site, to or from off-site, or between buildings on the LBNL site that are not adjacent.

• Unopened Containers in Original DOT Packaging (e.g., boxes or other DOT approved containment): Transportation will transport (x 5404).
• Unopened Containers (not in DOT containment ): Waste Management will transport (x 5877).
• Opened Containers: Waste Management will transport (x 5877).
• Compressed Gas Cylinders: Transportation will transport (x 5404).

Transportation within buildings or between adjacent buildings may be done by Laboratory employees provided that it can be reasonably done in one trip utilizing appropriate hand carts and secondary containment.

• When hand-carrying open containers of hazardous chemicals or unopened containers with corrosive or highly acutely or chronically toxic chemicals, place the container in a secondary container or a bucket.

• Rubberized buckets are commercially available and provide both secondary containment as well as "bump" protection.

• If several bottles must be moved at once, the bottles should be transported on a small cart with a substantial rim to prevent slippage from the cart. Wherever available, a freight elevator should be used to transport chemicals from one floor to another.

Compressed Gas Cylinders: Use standard cylinder carts to transport cylinders. While carts are preferred, cylinders weighing 11 kg (25 lbs.) or less may be hand carried. Never move a cylinder with a regulator connected to it. Cylinder valve protection caps and valve opening caps must be in place during movement of cylinders. Lecture bottles and other cylinders that are not normally equipped with valve protection caps must be transported in either the original DOT specification box or an equivalent container.

Chemical Inventory

Chemical inventory policy and procedures are described in the LBNL Chemical Inventory Instruction Manual.

Line managers are responsible for entering and deleting hazardous materials from the inventory. All hazardous materials are required to be included in the inventory. The EH&S Division maintains a site-wide chemical inventory database program which uses barcodes applied to containers as the unique database identifier.  The maximum quantity that could be present at any point in time is the quantity that should be bar-coded and appear in the inventory. Contact an EH&S Industrial Hygienist for information on database implementation and training.

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