Stanford has created a new 12-member task force to review and evaluate the state and perception of the safety culture in campus research laboratories while assessing how Stanford’s research labs align with the seven key characteristics of a strong safety culture as identified by the American Chemical Society in 2012.

Dubbed the Task Force for Advancing the Culture of Laboratory Safety at Stanford University, the team—whose members represent a variety of the University’s laboratory academic leadership and laboratory research community—held its first meeting in October and has scheduled two additional town hall meetings later in the year.

The meetings will be held primarily to gather feedback from laboratory bench researchers, including postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, research associates and research assistants.

In an interview with the Stanford Report, Robert Waymouth, co-chair of the task force, said the team was not created in response to a crisis in lab safety but in guidance of the broad consensus in the United States that all universities should be paying closer attention to lab safety practices and habits.

The task force will compile a report identifying the best practices of a sound and proactive laboratory safety culture within the research labs, management systems and programs in the University. Using this information, the task force will recommend ways to promote and advance a robust and positive safety culture among researchers.