Accident & Emergency Procedures

To help protect the safety and health of all members of the University community, please report any fire, hazardous material exposure/spill, accident, incident, or near miss immediately to Public Safety and EH&S as instructed in the:

Columbia University Laboratory Emergency Procedures Table (click)

Any work-related personal injury or hazardous material exposure must be documented, at the earliest opportunity, using the Columbia University Departmental Accident Report Form.

Any work-related incident resulting in an employee in-patient hospitalization, once confirmed, must be immediately reported to EH&S by email to [email protected] with a “Subject” line that reads “OSHA Reportable Incident”.  Additional instructions for this email can be found below.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) revised the requirements for reporting work-related fatality, injury and illness information, effective January 1, 2015. The rule retains the requirement to report all fatalities to OSHA within eight hours, but amends the regulation to require employers to report all work-related in-patient hospitalizations, as well as amputations and losses of an eye, to OSHA within 24 hours; inpatient hospitalizations must be reported only if they occur within 24 hours of the incident. OSHA defines inpatient hospitalization as a formal admission to the inpatient service of a hospital or clinic for care or treatment.

In order to streamline reporting for the University community, EH&S serves as the University-wide reporting entity for OSHA-reportable incidents. In the event of a workplace incident, the manager of the employee involved in the incident should send an email to [email protected], with the subject line “Urgent - OSHA Reportable Incident” and include the following information:

  • Brief description of the work-related incident
  • Location of the work-related incident
  • Time of the work-related incident
  • Type of reportable incident (i.e., fatality, inpatient hospitalization, amputation or loss of eye)
  • Number of employees who suffered the incident
  • Names of the employees who suffered the incident
  • Contact person and his or her phone number