7871

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7871
• Author: Snyder, D. E.
• Title: Preserved Larval and Small-Fish Collections of the Upper Colorado River Basin
• USFW Year: 1996.
• USFW - Doc Type: Maintenance and Cataloging of a Valuable Historical Database - Final Report.
• Copyright Material: NO

LFL COLLECTION POLICIES AND PROCEDURES MANUAL

16

Health,. Safety, Hazardous Wastes, and Emergencies

LFL strives to provide a safe working environment for its staff and visitors and is
subject to university, state, and federal health, safety, and hazardous waste policies and
regulations, mostly in accord with guidelines of the university's Environmental Health
Services program. We continue to seek support for improvements in collection storage that
will facilitate better access and guard against the hazards of fire, earthquake, and accidents.
LFL and its collection are housed in rooms with an overhead fire sprinkler system. Fire
extinguishers are maintained by the university within and just outside LFL facilities and a
manual alarm is positioned in the hall leading to those facilities. Procedures for reporting
emergency situations are posted near a telephone just inside the entrance to LFL facilities.
Recognizing the hazards of working with formaldehyde, alcohols, and other substances used
in the preparation and storage of collection specimens, LFL and the university try to assure
adequate ventilation of both work and specimen-storage areas. A double sink with exhaust
hood and partially enclosed work stations with exhaust vents are provided for work with
specimens in preservative. Waste preservatives are stored in 5-gallon containers which are
regularly exchanged with empty containers by the university Environmental Health Services
for recycling or incineration. LFL also provides gloves and barrier hand cremes for
employee use, emergency formaldehyde respirators, and a portable air filtering machine
designed to scavenge fonnaldehyde fumes in the event of fonnalin spills. A basic first-aid kit
and eye-wash bottle are maintained in a central location for employee and visitor use. LFL
employees and visitors have a mutual responsibility to themselves, others, and the LFL
Collection to act in a safe and responsible manner with specimens, preservatives, and ~
hazardous materials and situations. LFL senior staff will address and respond as soon as
possible to unsafe, unhealthy, or potentially hazardous situations brought to their attention.

Disposition of Orphaned Collections

LFL seeks agreements with depositing agencies, other collections maintained on the
campus, organizations concerned with natural history collections, and permanent regional and
national ichthyological collections to help ensure the proper care and permanency of its
collections. Such agreements should include arrangements for transfer of LFL Collection
specimens to one or more pennanent ichthyological collections should LFL no longer be able
to adequately maintain its holdings and provide public access to them. In the event LFL can
no longer physically or financially maintain and manage the collections under it's care, the
curator, other LFL staff, or an appropriate representative of the Department of Fishery and
Wildlife Biology will carry out prior arrangements for specimen transfer or, in the absence of
such agreements, seek alternative collections willing to assume curatorial responsibility. In
such an event, collections maintained by LFL that remain under the authority of contributing
agencies, will be returned to those agencies or transferred to an alternative collection with
which those agencies are able to make suitable arrangements.