Cold box safety alert?

July 24, 2019 11:50 AM

We have a cold box in my lab that doesn't have a built-in emergency response button. Cell phones don't work inside. What are my options?

Are there 911 buttons that have an extended antenna which we could run out of the room? Any other creative solutions?

posted by you're a kitty! to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

Can you explain a little more what the situation is and what you're after?

I'm envisioning some sort of walk-in fridge type-thing which you could accidentally lock yourself inside. Is this what you mean? Are you are looking for a way to alert the authorities should this happen? If so, what is the door like, etc?
posted by number9dream at 11:56 AM on July 24, 2019

Scary for a walk-in freezer to not have any safety devices-- if that's the case, you should always always be accessing it with a buddy outside at the very least. Otherwise just retrofit a proper locking mechanism with a emergency release inside like this (4" door), and wire in an alarm too.

It's it's a proper walk-in freezer, you probably already have a maintenance contract with someone who handles your HVAC-- I'd ask them to do the modifications required to keep you all safe.
posted by Static Vagabond at 12:07 PM on July 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Who is your lab safety officer? Is that person aware of this? It would be against policy at many institutions and even if it's not, they may have suggestions. (Obviously check with your PI first if you're not the PI - but I'd be really sketched out by someone who wanted to keep this situation secret from the safety/compliance person.)
posted by Frowner at 12:47 PM on July 24, 2019 [11 favorites]

With respect to your desire to come up with a creative solution, this is really something that the environmental health and safety officer (or whatever your equivalent is) should know about ASAP and it should be their responsibility to come up with solutions. Escalate within your available channels, starting with your PI or department head or whoever is next up from you. This is a very serious problem but it needs an institutional response.

In the meantime, buddy system only!
posted by epanalepsis at 1:01 PM on July 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

You could also call Risk Management if you don't get satisfaction from other pathways. This seems like a situation that could lead to a researcher's accidental death, and aside from all the other obvious issues, the institution's insurer would surely insist on an inside release, and probably insist on checking all the other labs, as well. PIs are powerful, but not all-powerful.

All the restaurants I've worked in have had inside-release mechanisms, so they are surely standard. How was this freezer installed without it?
posted by citygirl at 1:32 PM on July 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

It seems like you’ve already gotten a lot of excellent advice. If your institution is dragging its feet for any reason and you’re in the US, OSHA might be another good resource—their website is osha.gov.
posted by epj at 4:04 PM on July 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

At the simplest you could drill a hole in the walls of the box large enough to accommodate an RJ-11 jack and just run a long phone extension cable from the nearest jack to a plain handset on the inside. I'd use a wall handset and mount the phone directly over the drilled hole.

This seems like such a simple solution I wonder if there isn't another constraint.
posted by Mitheral at 11:58 PM on July 24, 2019

Don't trust your life to an electric device. Get a proper lock installed, this is almost certainly a worker safety violation.
posted by benzenedream at 3:01 AM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Oh, sorry, to clarify—there is a proper lock on the unit, designed for user safety, and the safety team runs regular tests of it. I'm just overly paranoid :)
posted by you're a kitty! at 8:17 AM on July 25, 2019

I also assumed you were concerned due to a lack of a proper safety latch on the door, but I see from your follow-up that's not the case. A properly maintained safety latch overseen by a safety team should be all that is required to keep you safe. Any creative solution you come up with on your own is at best going to be less effective than the existing safety measures, and at worst may undermine their effectiveness if it involves running cables through the doorway in a way that could accidentally wedge the latch. If you're concerned that the safety measures in place aren't adequate, discuss that with your safety officer to have additional properly-designed measures installed rather than your own creative solution. If the safety measures are adequate but you're afraid to work in the cold box because of anxiety or a phobia, the safest thing to do is try to address your fears with a therapist and/or give yourself enough experience with the cold box's latch (perhaps with a friend present outside) that you're able to convince yourself of its safety.
posted by biogeo at 9:49 AM on July 25, 2019