A Hazardous Material Inventory assists in the organization of a research laboratory, provides accurate information to first responders, and is compliant with occupational health and safety law.

Inventory types include Hazardous Materials, Chemical, Biological and Radiological.

Notes:

All of the inventory spreadsheets have a worksheet labeled “Material Transfer.” It is important to accurately record the transfer of any hazards and note the location to which they are moved. More on the transportation of dangerous goods.

Please include specific lab area designations in the location field (e.g., "cabinet 1" or "shelf A"). You should use consistent names for your locations so the auditors and emergency responders can group them appropriately. For example, if you write "cabinet 1" one time and "cab 1" another time, the spreadsheet will consider these to be two different locations.

Hazardous Materials Inventory

The three categories of hazardous materials are chemical, biological and radiological. If your laboratory contains more than one category of hazardous materials (ex. both chemical and radiological), download and maintain the Hazardous Materials Inventory.

Chemical Inventory

If your laboratory only contains chemical hazards, download and maintain a Chemical Inventory.

When filling out your Chemical Inventory be sure to:

• include the prefixes with chemical names
• note the CAS number
• avoid using chemical name abbreviations and chemical formulas

Biological Inventory

If your laboratory only has biological hazards, download and maintain the Biological Inventory. This spreadsheet can be used to track your inventory, or as an example of the categories that you need to provide to the emergency responders.

Please visit ‘What risk group is my organism’ for help with classifying your biological hazards.

Radiological Inventory

If your laboratory only has radiological hazards, download and maintain the Radioisotope Datasheet. By maintaining this datasheet throughout the year, you can use the document to fill out the online Radioactive Inventory Form (available annually on the Risk Management Services website from January 1 - 31).

In addition to maintaining your lab inventory, you must also provide an annual inventory to the UBC Radiation Safety Office within the first month of each year.

The inventory provides an overview of acquisitions, disposal activities and residual radioactivity for the previous calendar year. The information obtained from the annual inventory is presented to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as a component of UBC’s annual report.

Material Transfer Records

Material transfer records are necessary for the transfer of any hazardous material. For chemicals this means large volumes or masses, toxins, pharmaceuticals and/or other controlled substances. For biological substances, this applies to any level 2 or level 3 agent and viral vectors. For radiological materials, the UBC Radiation Safety Office needs to be contacted.

All of the above inventory spreadsheets have a worksheet labeled “Material Transfer.” It is important to accurately record the transfer of any hazards and note the location to which they are moved.

More information on the Transportation of Hazardous Materials