In order to meet regulatory requirements the university must conduct a periodic inventory of chemicals on campus. In support of this effort departments with chemicals must submit an inventory to the Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) by Thursday, March 1. This request only applies to chemicals on the Knoxville campus and not the Agriculture campus.
Please ensure that compressed gas cylinders (including lecture bottles) are included in the chemical inventory; knowing which labs have compressed gas cylinders is very important to the fire department for emergency response. If there are no substantial changes from the last annual inventory, or if the only change is to the building or room number, contact EHS at 974-5084. Departments are asked not to delete previous inventories.
The annual inventory provides departments with an opportunity to inspect chemicals and take action on any that are abandoned or unwanted, have faded/missing/illegible labels, and/or are deteriorating. Chemicals with bulging lids, cracked containers, past expiration date, or that have lost purity and are no longer usable and should be discarded.
Directors and department heads are asked to share message to those who work with hazardous chemicals so that they can meet the deadline. To assist labs in updating their inventories, email reports will be sent to the lab managers of all inventory records in the database, and will include a Microsoft Excel file of their existing inventory data in the database.
An Excel template is available that provides detailed instructions on completing the chemical inventories. This format uploads directly to the database, and labs are strongly encouraged to use it in submitting inventory data. However, if a lab has inventory data in a different file format, EHS will work with the lab to find an acceptable format. Generally, importing data from other formats is more time consuming for all parties due to the detailed database format requirements which involve extensive back-and-forth communication to get accurate information into the database.
To submit inventories or for further assistance, contact Pam Koontz at pjkoontz@utk.edu or 974-5084. For more information visit http://web.utk.edu/~ehss.