Health and Safety statement

Health and safety in school and college science affects all concerned: teachers and technicians, their employers, students, their parents or guardians, as well as authors and publishers. These guidelines refer to procedures in the United Kingdom. If you are working in another country you may need to make alternative provision.

See the health and safety notes in each experiment. This is general guidance.

Health & safety checking

As part of the reviewing process, the experiments on this website have been checked for health and safety. In particular, we have attempted to ensure that:

• all recognized hazards have been identified,
• suitable precautions are suggested,
• where possible, the procedures are in accordance with commonly adopted model (general) risk assessments,
• where model (general) risk assessments are not available, we have done our best to judge the procedures to be satisfactory and of an equivalent standard.

Assumptions

It is assumed that:

• the practical work is carried out or supervised by a qualified science teacher with adequate knowledge of physics and the equipment used,
• practical work is conducted in a properly equipped and maintained laboratory,
• rules for student behaviour are strictly enforced,
• equipment is regularly inspected and properly maintained,
• with appropriate records are kept,
• care is taken with normal laboratory operations such as heating substances and handling heavy objects,
• good laboratory practice is observed,
• eye protection is worn whenever risk assessments require it,
• hand-washing facilities are readily available in the laboratory.

Teachers' and their employers' responsibilities

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act and related Regulations, UK employers are responsible for making a risk assessment before hazardous procedures are undertaken or hazardous materials are used. Teachers are required to co-operate with their employers by complying with such risk assessments. However, teachers should be aware that mistakes can be made and, in any case, different employers adopt different standards.

Therefore, before carrying out any practical activity, teachers should always check that what they are proposing is compatible with their employer’s risk assessments and does not need modification for their particular circumstances. Any rules or restrictions issued by the employer must always be followed, whatever is recommended here. However, far less is banned by employers than is commonly supposed. Be aware that some activities, such as the use of radioactive material, have particular regulations that must be followed.

Reference material

Model (general) risk assessments have been taken from, or are compatible with:

• CLEAPSS

• ASE Safeguards in the school laboratory 11th edition 2006
• ASE Topics in Safety 3rd edition, 2001
• ASE Safety reprints, 2006 or later

Procedures

Clearly, you must follow whatever procedures for risk assessment your employers have laid down. As far as we know, almost all the practical work and demonstrations on this website are covered by the model (general) risk assessments detailed in the above publications, and so, in most schools and colleges, you will not need to take further action, other than to consider whether any customisation is necessary for the particular circumstances of your school or class.

Special risk assessments

Only you can know when your school or college needs a special risk assessment. But thereafter, the responsibility for taking all the steps demanded by the regulations lies with your employer.

External websites

The Institute of Physics are not responsible for the content of external websites which may be linked from this website's pages.