A Systematic Review on Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control in Academic Laboratory

Abstract

Laboratory work, practical work, and practical work-related experiments are usually carried out in academic laboratories. Laboratory users are continuously exposed to hazardous substances and equipment in the laboratory. Limited research has been conducted on risk assessment in academic laboratories. However, there is no comprehensive review on hazard identification and risk assessment in the academic laboratory. Thus, this paper presents an overview of the academic laboratory’s risk assessment, focusing on the risk assessment method, type of hazard, and control measures applied to eliminate the hazard. A total of 61 publications were identified from Scopus, IEEE Explore, and manual searching. The study was guided by PRISMA, and after the screening and eligibility process, 13 publications were selected and reviewed. Fifteen risk assessment methods were identified in the publication, with 53.3 % applied semi-quantitative method, 26.7% qualitative method and 20% quantitative method. For hazard identification, 54% discussed specific hazards, while 46% discussed non-specific hazards. Most of the hazard discussed was chemical hazard due to the hazardous nature of the chemical, the usage of chemical to conduct experiments in the laboratory, and the type of laboratory assessed which is mainly chemical laboratory. Most of the publications used at least more than one control measure to overcome the risk. The most common control measure applied is the combination of engineering control, administrative control, and personal protective equipment (PPE). In future work, simple, fast, low cost and efficient risk assessment is needed to aid academic laboratories in further improving laboratory risk management. A combination of qualitative and quantitative risk assessment methods may be required to enhance the risk assessment process by utilizing the positive aspect of both approaches. An online risk assessment may be needed to effectively communicate the risk to laboratory users to eliminate or reduce accident cases in the academic laboratory.