Near Misses

• minor injury (medical attention not needed or first-aid was self-applied


• laboratory equipment failure


• unexpected chemical reaction


• non-compliance with safety policies or procedures


• Event which had the potential to cause property damage or disruption of facility operations

Near misses provides a mechanism to communicate and address potential incidents. Most importantly, serves as an educational tool for the research community.

With the permission from the reporting individual, the near miss can be shared on the EHS website to illustrate lessons learned to potentially prevent future incidents. The reporter’s identity will remain anonymous and details of the location will never be revealed.

There are multiple resources that can be useful for learning from accidents or incidents that have occurred in other laboratories:

• UCLA Center for Laboratory safety https://cls.ucla.edu/lessons-learned
• Lessons learned from UC Berkeley https://ehs.berkeley.edu/lessons-learned-uc-berkeley
• UCSB Laboratory incidents collection
• The Laboratory Safety Institute website maintains a Memorial Wall that includes an extensive list of laboratory accidents.
• The American Biological Safety Association website maintains a Laboratory-Acquired Infection (LAI) Database that enables the user to search for specific terms and find incident information such as the biological agent(s) involved, occupation of the affected person, biosafety level, device/equipment involved, how the exposure occurred, PPE worn, engineering controls used, follow-up procedures, actions that may have prevented exposure, post-exposure prophylaxis provided and agency reporting.