The implementation of the safety in th e Lab comes from the top. How is it that a chemist in the academic environmen t is less concern about safety rules in the Lab while the same chemist in an industrial laboratory setting is very vigilant about the safety rules? I ha ve had the privilege of working at both environments and seeing first hand how the culture differs from one to the other. During my academic years the laborat ory safety rules rarely was brought up during weekly research meetings while at the industrial setting there is a mandatory safety meeting once a month in addi tion to the research meetings. If the implementation of the safety rules is not demanded and reviewed frequently one tends to push them aside until it is t oo late.
Michael Hojjatie, Ph.D.
TKI
From: DCHAS-L
Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**list.uvm.edu] On
Behalf Of Fred Simmons
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
5:34
AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Serio
us Lab
Incidents
Rob makes several good points.
A paper recently published on the subject looked at incidents in both industr y and laboratories and found that there is a significant gap in the type of training that both chemists and safety processionals are given in this area .
The article, "Chemical Safety: Asking the Right Questions" is in the Journal of Chemical Health & Safety May/June 2009 issue. The cita tion is volume 16, number 3, pp.34-39.
Similar article in the same publication is "Laboratory Safety?" column by Neal Langerman, pp.49-50. He addresses the UCLA laboratory fatality inciden t.
Fred
Simmons
Department
of Energy
Savannah
ILPI <info**At_Symbol_Here**ILPI.COM>
06/23/2009 07:36 AM
|
|
I can tell you that any statistics out of ac
ademia
would be even more
During my years as an undergrad, grad studen
t,
postdoc, and professor,
In my personal experience, the only incident
s that
ever got recorded
Never once heard of that, although the EPA d
id
fine $25K for the waste
I have never heard of safety being a regular
agenda item at faculty
It has been LONG overdue for chemistry curri
cula
to start *teaching*
So, where/how do we even *begin* to change t
he
academic attitude? I'd
Rob Toreki
=========================
=========================
====
> 1. Has anyone got any statistics on res
earch
lab accidents in
> industry or academia, or alternative
suggestions for how to
> benchmark an individual or lab group sa
fety
record?
>
unreliable than those out of the Congression
al
Budget Office.
I was first and second-hand witness to numer
ous
accidents and
incidents that nobody ever even *thought* of
reporting. Sink fires,
hood fires, spills, waste disposal
"events", safety shower activations
and more. Most of the time the superv
isor
was not even told/aware.
were those that required a 911 call. O
r the
time the EPA showed up
for an inspection and found ten 5-gallon met
al
cans being used as
waste containers, one of which was forming a
puddle in the middle of
the analytical laboratory.
> 3. Does anyone know of a situation in w
hich a
faculty member was
> sanctioned as a result of a lab safety
incident?
>
violation - just the sort of penalty that re
ally
makes faculty members
Not Like bureaucrats (for some fixed percent
age of
folks, the campus
safety office(rs) fall into that category, a
las).
And let's view
that $25K fine in the context of the (regula
tory
feeble) OSHA fines
for the UCLA incident....talk about
disproportionate response!
meetings or research group meetings at any o
f the
four major
universities I have had experience with, but
there
would be occasional
discussions in the context of incidents or
responses that were
reported. Once in a while, some sort
of
"initiative" would start,
and that would peter out after a few weeks/m
onths.
It's a lot like
having home exercise equipment - one starts
off
with a good ideas and
resolve and then after 3 months, it's unused
and
forgotten.
No faculty member I have ever known has thou
ght
he/she was endangering
their students, and if you asked all of them
, they
would tell you and
genuinely believe that safety was a high pri
ority
in their labs. But
the fact of the matter is that there are sma
ll
subsets of folks who
are religious about safety as well as those
who
are complete slobs
(completely cluttered hoods, no protocols...
you
know the ones). The
vast majority of faculty fall somewhere in t
he
middle ground. And
never do you see a mechanism to do something
about
the tail end of
that curve.
safety the way that industry handles it (and
expects/desires students
to be trained). I am not aware of any
department that has tried to
instill a "culture of safety" thro
ughout
their curriculum, although
there are some excellent individual attempts
at
doing so. The core
problem here is that safety is not directly
a
research or funding-
generating activity, and (junior faculty, in
particular) are actively
discouraged from doing anything that does no
t
bring in the bucks,
generate papers, or count towards P&T
(promotion and tenure). The
problem is obviously greater at graduate-lev
el
schools and those
departments with a lot of "dead wood&qu
ot;
who are like a black hole for
new ideas - they get the safety proposal and
then
the light never
escapes.
say it has to start with the ACS and the
accreditation process.
Specifically, ACS-certified undergraduate pr
ograms
should explicitly
be required to teach industrial best s
afety
practices in their
curriculum. Students need to learn the
expectations and ramifications
("No PPE, newbie? You're fired.&q
uot;)
they will encounter in the "real"
world outside academia. Eventually, fa
culty
teaching courses with
this approach might start seeing The Light o
n the
matter, and we can
get the culture of safety to filter up to th
e
graduate level.
Safety Emporium - Lab & Safety Supplies
featuring brand names
you know and trust. Visit us at
esales**At_Symbol_Here**safetyemporium.com or toll-free
:
(866) 326-5412
Fax: (856) 553-6154, PO Box 1003, Blackwood,
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08012
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