User Safety

At each Office of Science user facility, the safety of our users and staff is our top priority. Safety is a shared responsibility between our facility staff and our users.

Most user facilities are working laboratories with complex, adaptable operating environments; the ever-changing user population may contain both novice and experienced researchers, some of whom are students; users typically face time pressure to make the most of their limited window of access, and will likely work long hours during their visit.  All of these factors create a vibrant and challenging environment for our user facility staff members, who work ceaselessly to maximize both safety and scientific productivity.

Researchers coming on-site to an Office of Science user facility are required to complete safety training; typically, a staff safety professional will review and discuss with the user any potential safety implications of their project/experiment before work commences.  For some these requirements may seem to be an imposition compared to the safety practices of their home institutions. As the steward of ten DOE national laboratories and several dozen user facilities, the Office of Science expects all visitors and users to respect these safety practices and our safety professionals, whose vigilance is vital to user facility operations and our mission goal of advancing scientific discovery.