초록
This paper shows survey result on safety management status of laboratories in Korea. In Korea, many studies and reports on laboratory safety have been published since the ministry of education, science and technology (MEST) enforced the Act on Establishing a Safe Environment of Laboratories (Lab Safety Act) in 2006. The MEST has surveyed status of safety management in institutions subject to Lab Safety Act in 2008 and 2010. According to the survey result, safety management status of universities and colleges has been improved on several factors such as establishment of safety manual and implementation of safety inspection; while the number of safety managers of universities and colleges have increased. However, the difficulties in performing duties of safety managers has increased because the number of exclusive safety managers has decreased. This paper identifies the similarities and differences between Occupational Safety and Health Act and Lab Safety Act on assignment and duties of safety managers; therefore, this paper suggests a standard to determine the number of safety managers and decide whether or not their duties should be exclusive. Besides current standard that is based on the number of researchers, the number of individual laboratories should be considered. The new method would be helpful to determine the number of exclusive safety managers because the amount of safety managers' duties generally do not depend on only the number of people who may be exposed to any risk but also the number of facilities that may be cause of any accident.