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Safety Alert - Safe use of sodium hypochlorite as a disinfectant
28 May 2021
A near miss occurred in a research laboratory which highlights the potential hazards associated with the use of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) as a disinfectant.
Chlorine based compounds (bleach and dichloro-isothiocyanurate) compounds make excellent disinfectants. Unfortunately they also have many hazardous reactions with a wide range of other common laboratory chemicals. The three principal hazardous reactions聽are:
- Reactions with ammonia/ammonium, producing the toxic gas chloramine
- Reactions with acids, producing the toxic gas chlorine
- Reaction with formaldehyde, producing the potent lung carcinogen bis(chloromethyl) ether
This Safety Alert does not in away way ban the use of the chlorine based disinfectants.
Action to be taken
Organisational learning is a key aspect of health and safety management therefore we would like to share the details of the incident with the UCL community.
Lessons learned as well as actions to be taken can be accessed by UCL Staff only.聽
We recommend you review these and the status within your own departments so that further incidents of this nature can be prevented and learning from this incident can take place throughout the university.