Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute document GP17-A3—Clinical Laboratory Safety; Approved Guideline—Third Edition is written for laboratorians who are responsible for developing and implementing a safety program. Aspects of a safety program addressed in this guideline include maintenance and inspection, personal safety, and warning signs and labels. The guideline also addresses fire prevention, electrical and radiation safety, and other potential laboratory hazards.

Several changes were made in this edition; chief among them is alignment with CLSI’s QMS approach and alignment with new or changed national and accreditation requirements for laboratories since the last version of this guideline. In addition, this version of GP17 is aligned with the United Nations’ Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). GHS is a system that defines and classifies the hazards of chemical products, and communicates health and safety information on labels and material safety data sheets (called Safety Data Sheets, or SDSs, in GHS). The goal is that the same set of rules for classifying hazards, and the same format and content for labels and SDSs, will be adopted and used around the world. An international team of hazard communication experts developed GHS.

Aspects of a safety program addressed in this guideline include maintenance and inspection, personal safety, and warning signs and labels. In addition, the guideline addresses fire prevention, electrical and radiation safety, and other potential laboratory hazards. Special considerations for anatomic pathology laboratories are also included. This guideline is written for laboratorians who are responsible for developing and implementing a safety program in medical laboratories. However, other types of laboratories will also find this guideline useful.