The Critical Role of Chemical Inventory Tracking in Risk Management

How confident are you as a lab leader that you’re aware of all the potential risks and hazards in your lab? Can you answer these easily and with confidence?

• How close to expiry are any energetic chemicals or peroxide formers?
• How easily can labs share excess and unneeded chemicals (and reduce their overflowing inventory)?
• How close are your fire control zones to their maximum allowable quantities (MAQs)?

If you can’t answer these and other risk-based questions, you should reevaluate your lab’s safety program and chemical tracking system.

Why track anything?

Without tracking, we get entropy, random actions, and greater risks. Fires catch, explosions occur, and people are exposed to all sorts of substances. You need a plan to track progress toward risk goals.

A classic literature quote illustrates the importance of building a clear plan. In Alice in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat asked where Alice was going, but she didn’t know. He says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” This isn’t said as a compliment—it’s bad. Any path won’t get you where you need to be to manage risks in the lab.

Safety and risk problems of not tracking your chemical inventory

There are costs to tracking and costs to not tracking. Costs matter, and they include both safety-related costs and others. People get injured. Labs can be harmed or destroyed. Entities can be cited and fined. There’s downtime, loss of research, or lost time. Perhaps the greatest risk is reputational harm (research grants or investors may dry up, schools can end up with fewer students, staff, or faculty).

Another significant risk to the organization is exceeding the maximum allowable quantities (MAQs). Building and fire codes set limits for total amounts of hazardous materials across several hazard categories (e.g., flammable liquids, toxic gases, etc.). If the aggregate of all labs—on a floor for instance—in any category exceeds its MAQ, it’s a violation and is considered unacceptable risk. The authority having jurisdiction, or AHJ, (e.g., a fire marshal) has the power to stop operations until MAQ issues are resolved.

Here are two real-world examples of risk problems that could have been prevented with an effective tracking program. 

Another lab asks if you have space to store their excess HF acid. They stockpiled it with purchases in larger containers to save money. The AHJ discovered that it put their entire fire control zone over the MAQ. Your other labs have no free space, thus creating a huge operational problem for everyone in that zone. 

You’re having lunch with another lab staff member who complains about having to purchase two chemicals on short order and pay for fast shipping. You comment, “That’s too bad, we have extra bottles of both of those!” It turns out that these same instances of excess chemicals have occurred many times among the various labs, costing thousands and adding to an overflowing inventory. 

Developing a robust hazardous waste safety program

So, how does chemical inventory management fit into your lab’s overall risk management strategy? Hint: It should be a core area of your safety strategy from purchase through disposal. Without an accurate inventory, you don’t have a full picture of all the hazards in your labs. Making it worse, these all add up to a colossal mess at the choke point— your hazardous waste facility or locations. Here are just a few potential adverse outcomes of poorly managed inventory.

• Your hazardous waste facility is beyond capacity. You must stop accepting wastes, immediately ship enough out to be disposed of, or call in a contractor—all of which have significant costs.
• The ongoing cost constraints for hazardous wastes is way over your budget. Now the organization must determine better cost allocations on a lab or department basis.
• Lab packing risks and incidents rise. Old chemicals present significant hazards. Packaging them up one by one and shipping them to a hazardous waste facility is costly and can result in an incident.
• Weather events can create bigger problems with more chemicals (e.g., high heat facilitating fires, cold freezing pipes and walkways, flooding shutting down labs, hurricanes, wildfires, etc.).

All the above can incur various costs, including regulatory citations, fines, injuries and exposures, production slowdowns, and reputational risk.

Other key elements of a safety program

Your lab chemical tracking system should also facilitate other beneficial aspects, such as:

• Safety document management (e.g., SDSs and chemical hazard reports)
• Safety equipment tracking (e.g., multi-gas meters, photoionization detectors (PIDs), etc.)
• Preparedness/resources/materials for safety inspections (e.g., weekly checklists, risk tools)
• Safety-related SOPs (e.g., for higher hazard chemicals, biologicals, and radioactive sources)
• First responder resources (e.g., high hazard inventory) and hazard info for medical personnel

Software tracking systems

As discussed above, the risks of not properly tracking your chemical inventory are much greater than the cost of purchasing a tracking system. There are many options with similarities and differences. Considerations for choosing one are critical to your success. For example:

• What’s a “lab” (i.e., the physical space, group of people, or what the lab does)?
• Does it link to purchasing?
• Is it integrated with hazardous waste?
• Can it auto-calculate MAQs?
• How is data displayed?
• How much are the total costs – initial and ongoing?

Be sure to do your homework. Decide what features are most important to your safe operations. Try using a nominal group process with your lab and get a rank order of features by importance specific to your situations. Then discuss these with a provider to compare your needs with their capabilities.

Improving safety and risk culture in your lab should always be the driving motivator behind developing a comprehensive safety program. Tracking systems are now the norm – be sure that yours serves the needs of your lab before it’s too late.