Food Safety Program

There are 36 establishments on campus that provide food service to students, workers and visitors. These establishments include cafeterias, restaurants, coffee/sandwich shops, convenient shops, mobile food carts, and day care centers. While each establishment must adhere to Federal, State and Local laws and regulations regarding food safety, they must also undergo thorough inspections performed by the Environmental Health and Safety Office (EHSO). These assessments are part of the EHSO’s Food Safety Program, which works to ensure compliance with appropriate laws and regulations. The various categories of evaluations are routine inspections, re-inspections, temporary food event inspections or complaint/outbreak inspections. Each inspection may last approximately 1-4 hours, depending on the size of the establishment. Some of the main items evaluated are the following: Personal hygiene of employees:

• Sanitation procedures and validation
• Temperature of food and storage units
• Food preparation/cooking procedures
• Pest/rodent control
• Equipment used

An important aspect of the inspection process is to provide and reinforce food safety training. Topics addressed are proper hand hygiene, glove use, hair restraint use, temperature holding, and law/regulation changes and updates.

For more information on food safety, training or the Food Safety Program contact Jihan Doss, Bio-Safety Officer with the Environmental Health and Safety Office via jldoss@uic.edu.

Radiation Safety Trainings

Radiation Safety Training Session

All individuals who work with radioactive material at UIC are required by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) to attend a UIC Radiation Safety Training Session. This training is three hours long with a written competency test given at the end. A Certificate of Attendance will be issued to those who complete this training and pass the test. This training is offered every two months at the College of Medicine Research Building (COMRB), Room 5175. Please see our website for further information and on-line registration: http://www.uic.edu/depts/envh/

Annual Refresher Training

(IEMA) requires that UIC provide Annual Refresher Training for researchers handling radioactive material. The Radiation Safety Office now offers a web-based modular training to fulfill this requirement.

Personnel who have recently completed the initial three hour radiation safety are not required to complete the annual refresher training until one year from that date. Please note: This annual refresher training does not replace the initial three hour training.

The Annual Refresher Training is found at:
http://www.uic.edu/depts/envh/. It is accessed through the Training link in the Table of Contents. For further information please contact the Radiation Safety Section at 6-7429.

Fire Prevention Week: October 8 – 14, 2006
“Prevent Cooking Fires: Watch What You Heat”

The purpose of fire prevention week is to promote a particular fire safety theme as well as to keep the public informed about the importance of fire prevention. Because more fires start in the kitchen than in any other part of the home, this year’s theme is “Prevent Cooking Fires: Watch What You Heat.” Some tips we can all use for safer cooking are:

Stand by your pan! Stay in the kitchen when you are cooking or turn of the stove if you must leave.

No kids allowed! Enforce a “kid-free-zone.” Use the back burners whenever possible and turn pot handles inward. Never hold a small child when cooking.

Keep it clean! Keep anything that can catch fire away from your stove top, including loose, dangling clothes. Clean up food and grease from burners and stove top.

Microwave with care! Plug the microwave directly into an outlet and never into an extension cord. Use only microwave-safe containers. Never use aluminum foil or metal objects in a microwave oven. Allow food to cool before you remove it from the microwave, and open microwave containers slowly as hot steam escaping from the containers can cause painful burns.

“Reproduced from the National Fire Prevention Association’s Fire Prevention Week Website, www.firepreventionweek.org. p2006 NFPA.”
For more information on Fire Prevention Week, visit the NFPA’s Fire Prevention Week Site: (www.firepreventionweek.org)