Change will come, Kaufman believes, only when a “culture of safety” akin to that widely cultivated in industry permeates universities and when lab chiefs are held responsible for everyone knowing and following accepted safety practices. Bresland foresees the U.S. Chemical Safety Board developing recommendations and cites interest expressed at meetings of such bodies as the American Chemical Society and the National Academies’ Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology. Congress is considering the Protecting America’s Workers Act, which would, if passed, extend federal OSHA protection to state employees.
Experience supports the possibility of change. Regulatory reforms made protection of experimental animals and human subjects conditions for receiving federal funding. Similar actions could go a long way to ensuring the safety of the people who do the hands-on work of science.
This article was originally published with the title Danger in School Labs.
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16 Comments
Add CommentThe tone and subject matter of the article suggest that this is a problem only in more advanced research labs. This is far from the truth. I recall a high school student who decided he would prepare some nitroglycerine and mixed up the components. An explosion resulted, killing another student, unfortuneately not the individual who did the mixing. A common undergraduate organic experiment used to be the preparation of nitrobenzene by mixing a nitrating mixture with benzene in a seperatory funnel and shaking it. An undergraduate mistakenly substituted methanol for benzene and when he started shaking it exploded, killing him.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll labs are dangerous by there nature. If all protocols and safety equipment are applied this can be mitigated but never fully eliminated. As in all industry's. Wear your gear, Ask if unsure confer with a peer, read the MSDS and understand its consequences before beginning procedures.You should be ok.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust be Glad your not working in the third world mix carcinogens in a vat with your bare hands to make cheap cotton T-shirts or using mercury to get a miniscule trace of gold to feed your children.
Is it really true that work in the chemical industry is done under conditions that are more safe for the workers and for the environment? Exploding oil rigs and cars with involuntary acceleration come to mind. Accidents are part of activities, they are not planned or desired, but they do happen. More rules will not help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I believe that we are at a point where the rules make lawyers happy but also make the rest of us less safe!
yes it is high risk working at the lab expecially with bunsen burner (we have approximately 8 bunsen burner each has 1000 celcious,so = 8000 celcious ), and our students as teens love playing without cover and i always asking them( with passion) to be more carefully at the lab.Talking about hazard ,chemicals accident and their effect for kids must be in the curriculum also.So the lab tech can do work more safer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of our jobs as educators in to reduce the risk so that the benefits (for example, of using a Bunsen Burner) out weigh the risks. We need to have rules in writing that are enforced and that have consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur inquiries into accidents at The Laboratory Safety Institues (LSI, www.labsafetyinstitute.org) has consistantly shown that the accident frequency rate in academia (schools and colleges and universities) is 10-50 times greater than in the chemical industry.
Having worked as an expert witness in cases where students were badly injured, I never met an attorney that was made happy by the rules. They did their best to represent their client in an adversarialy system where defendents simply do not want to apologize to the injured student (and properly compensate the the student) for the defendents egregious errors.
Doctor Frank is very right. This is not just a problem for research. LSI has a publication (85 Years of Progress) that summarizes some of the worst accidents in lab over the past 85 years. If you or Doctor Frank would like to share a summary of a lab fatality with LSI, we will be happy to give an electronic copy of our publication.
No institution is going to have the safety culture they need to make serious accident less likely until they embrace the concept the "working safely must be a condition of employment". Senior administrators need to provide "Leadership In Safety". LSI teaches them how. The dog sled can't go any faster than the lead dog.
Jim Kaufman, LSI, jim@labsafety.org
"An explosion resulted, killing another student, unfortuneately not the individual who did the mixing."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStrange phraseology. Are you suggesting it would have been fortunate if it had killed the individual who did the mixing?
What they are saying is, it is more tragic that an innocent bystander was killed, rather than the fool who mixed up the explosive concoction. Not that either is "fortunate", but it is more of a tragedy that someone who had nothing to do with the explosion was killed rather than the person responsible for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure about that. The initial phrase, "An explosion resulted, killing another student," pretty much covers the description and situation part. The, "unfortuneately not the individual who did the mixing," clearly suggests, at the least, that it was 'unfortunate' the individual doing the mixing was not the one killed as a result. It is not much of a stretch of logical simplification to reduce the phrase to, 'it would have been fortunate if the individual doing the mixing was the one killed.' I'm sure that most would agree that anyone being killed as a result of ignorance or recklesness is unfortunate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, being accidentally killed is unfortunate in any circumstance. However it is MORE unfortunate for someone to die because of another person's error, than the person committing the error dying because of their own actions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point is, accountability, owning your own actions. No one wants anyone to die. But if someone did die, and they did, better that the fool that caused the explosion in the first place die than someone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of the fool who caused the explosion die as a result of another person's foolishness.
To make another example, say someone foolishly ignites a huge pile of fireworks. Which would be worse? The person doing the igniting dying, or some person across the street, minding their own business being killed in a deluge of flames, while the guy who lighted them off escapes unscathed. It would be best if no one died. But if someone is going to die, better the person whose foolish actions caused a lethal situation, than someone who had nothing to do with it.
Another example. I personally knew a young attractive girl who was almost killed in a car crash, caused by a foolish old man who crossed into her lane, and crashed into her car. The young lady escaped unscathed. The old man died. My reaction was, "better him than her" because 1) the old man caused the crash, and 2) better an old man who has lived his life die than a vibrant young woman who has most of her life ahead of her.
Own your own actions. Just like these murderers that go on a killing spree, then they turn the gun on themselves. Yes, it would be best if no one was killed at all. But it would be "less worse" if the killer just turned the gun on themselves to start with and spared everyone else.
A new trend in academic labs to to decrease the hood face velocity to save money/energy costs. OSHA standards (set by Congress) are very low. I feel that these green lab buildings are health hazards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, but one plays in a poor karmic arena making any sort of deserved/undeserved judgements. Better to just express sympathy for all when it is after the fact. I just groused at the author's use of the word 'unfortunate' referring to the non-injury of the fatailty-causing mixer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho deserves to die aside, I find it interesting that no one seems to have lost their job. It seems reasonable that lax safety protocols correlates with lower quality science as they both require discipline and attention to detail. Without direct consequence and accountability, as likely exists in industry, no one is going to change anything. If some new laws are passed I hope they have teeth, because not just safety is at stake; quality science is as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I personally knew a young attractive girl who was almost killed in a car crash, caused by a foolish old man who crossed into her lane, and crashed into her car." And also, as we all know, any death is much more unfortunate if an attractive person is killed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisall one has to do is look at B.P.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe plant in Texas City, Texas should be shut down by OSHA et al, but no way $
how many will they be allowed to murder ?
how many have they murdered now, and how many will die in the future from the 40 day and 40 night release of dangerous toxins ;
BP: 500,000 pounds of emissions released By T.J. Aulds The Daily News Published June 5, 2010
TEXAS CITY At BPs Texas City refinery, more than 400 pounds a day of benzene 40 times the state reportable levels was released during a 40-day period while a subunit of the refinerys ultracracker unit was offline, according to a company filing with the states environmental agency Friday.
In all, BP officials said more than 500,000 pounds of pollutants and nonpollutants were released while the company increased flaring as they tried to repair a compressor on the faulty unit.
http://galvestondailynews.com/story/157738/
http://seabreezenews.com/back%20issues/1007-July_2010/Page_01c.pdf
http://seabreezenews.com/back%20issues/1008-August_2010/Page_01c.pdf
it's dangerous enough in college labs doing simple experiments, especially a new experiment each week to learn. I recall myself adding too much too fast of the required amount of liquid to my test tube product, and suddenly it started fuming like it could blow up and getting really hot and the liquid started rising up out of the test tube. I turned on the cold tap water to cool the outside of the glass off, desperately hoping to save my experiment and put out the fire. but the experiment was ruined and had to be repeated when it was almost finished.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a very scary story. I do agree that most labs have become a very risky place to work. They either pose some kind of health or safety issue. I mean even in high school labs there is still asbestos being used. That is a terrible risk for children to encounter. There is more information <a href="http://www.banasbestosnow.com/blog/2012/01/27/asbestos-science-kits?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BAN&utm_content=SchoolSafety">here</a>. I think it is pretty terrible stuff going on.
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