The UMD Environmental Health and Safety Office (EHSO) is a branch of the Twin Cities Health, Safety, and Risk Management. We provide comprehensive services and implement programs designed to protect the health and safety of faculty, staff, and students.
Some of these services include: hazardous waste management, training, ergonomic evaluations, hazard assessments, internal audits, and exposure monitoring.
MSafe (formerly SafetyStratus)
We are currently in a transition period for both chemical inventory management and waste processing software. The University is shifting to have safety inspections, chemical inventories, and waste management all handled through the MSafe portal (formerly SafetyStratus).
In 2024 the University put out a bid for a new chemical inventory software because our current system is no longer supported by the company that created it. After reviewing the capabilities of several platforms and testing the usability with research staff volunteers, Health Safety, and Risk Management (HSRM) decided to transition our chemical inventory and waste databases from Chematix to MSafe (formally known as Safety Stratus).
Labs, classes, and work areas will be contacted individually when their inventories are needed, as chemical inventories will be updated building by building. All labs and other research areas at the University of Minnesota are required to have an inventory in the system that is managed by HSRM and must be updated at least annually or whenever there is a building construction or renovation project. One of the main reasons for these requirements is the need for hazard class analyses to make sure we are complying with building code. HSRM is currently working with researchers to meet this requirement.
Additionally, this academic year there will be a transition to waste handling through MSafe which is also due to our move away from Chematix. Once this transition occurs, there will be help sessions for the labs who submit waste for pick up as well as guides made to make the transition as seamless as possible. A notification for the waste processing transition will be sent once the date for the program to be launched in MSafe is finalized.
