All, Lots of very good points here, but training still only gets you so far. Li ke others have pointed out, you can participate in training and repetitive refreshers, even participate in drills, but when the incident happens to YO U, you may or may not react to it appropriately. What helps is to have som eone else there who is not directly affected by the incident. We do a much better job recalling how to help another person than how to help ourselves . We can be in denial. I've seen it here and I've experienced it myself. Let me share a couple of examples... The first was a highly, repetitively trained molecular biology lab instruct or who spilled phenol onto her leg. Her response was to go into the ladies ' room, remove her pants, wipe off her leg with a paper towel, rinse her pa nts, put the pants back on, go back and finish the class. Then she went ho me and showered. It was not until the next day when the pain and blisterin g continued that she finally sought medical attention. This is a person wh o had helped students through spills and cuts and incidents for more than 1 0 years. She knew better, but somehow trusted that it was going to be okay . The second involved a graduate student who had a similar incident. She abs olutely knew that she could have called for help, but instead, she phoned h er mother, who is a PhD chemist, bench scientist at a well-known pharmaceut ical company. Her mother told her to wipe it off and take some Advil. The student kept asking if she should go to the health center (and it would ha ve cost nothing, as every graduate student on our campus has health insuran ce through the University), but her mother told her it would be okay. She finally went to the health center nearly 48 hours after the incident. And I myself, a safety professional and former EMT, have reasoned my way ou t of getting an x-ray, checking to see if something needs sutures, etc., be cause there can be a bit of denial about health issues affecting your own b ody. I recently read an article by Dr. Oz - the physician who regularly gi ves medical management and health advice to millions, who delayed his own f ollow-up colonoscopy because he just didn't want to deal with the fact that something might just be wrong. I make a point of giving these examples when providing training, hopefully provoking people to think about how they might react. You just don't know, which is why people should not work alone in labs. Robin M. Izzo, M.S. Associate Director, EHS Princeton University 609-258-6259 (office) =A0 How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling i t a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. ~ Abraham Lincoln -----Original Message----- From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Da vid C. Finster Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 10:52 AM To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Boston College incident follow up All, I would "second" Brad's comments about the need for training and education that exposes students to simulated events and that is heavily based on repe tition. Truth is: people panic when confronted with unexpected events and , in knowing this, it's almost laughable that one of first "rules" we teach in a panic-inducing situation is "not to panic." Yeah, right. So, I tell students to go ahead and "panic" (for a BRIEF moment!) to get that out of t he way and then "go back to your training". That is, do what you have prac ticed doing. In the EMS world, EMTs get trained about the "ABCs" (airway, breathing circulation) when confronted with an unresponsive patient. Do wha t you have been trained to do. The ABCs, (and there's more, happily.) But... how much training can we do? Some programs are lucky to talk about the use of fire extinguishers, much less design the use of one in some simu lated situation. This takes time. And, repetition takes time. (Duh.) Co llege chemistry faculty (of which I am one) guard time jealously in their c lasses and labs. There are LOTS of pressures to cover material, and beyond the chemistry we now have to teach writing, speaking, critical thinking, e tc. And, let me tell you, the students are NOT coming to us "better prepar ed" these days. When I teach chemical kinetics in general chemistry a sign ificant portion of my students don't know the difference between a linear a nd non-linear function. Gees. I ask them to sketch the graph of "y = x -squared" and many cannot do this. Think PV=nRT is a simple equation? N ot for everyone. So, there is "lots to teach" (and learn!) Having said this, though, what c an POSSIBLY be more important than teaching chemical health and safety? Di d anyone ever die from not knowing the Diels-Alder reaction mechanism? Or how the d orbitals are split in a tetrahedral field? Or, the difference be tween STO-3G and STO-3G**? Or...?? And, I love all this stuff, and I lov e to teach it. The challenge to the chemical education community is to fin ally face up to the fact that we simply MUST teach more about chemical heal th and safety in all of our programs, in all of our classes. It is immoral not to do so. To put students in hazardous situations (called "labs") wit hout training (and education - not really the same thing, but both are nece ssary) is irresponsible. This takes time. It takes repetition, which take s more time. No simple answers here. It's pretty hard to argue against the notion of a "constant volume" curriculum the way we have designed our educational packa ges so that "safety education" will likely have to displace something else. Life is full of choices. What is more important than safety? I'm likely preaching to the choir on this listserve, of course. OK. CHAS and CHED (and CCS and ??? and ???) need to get together on this topic and s tart to force changes. Dave David C. Finster Professor of Chemistry University Chemical Hygiene Officer Department of Chemistry Wittenberg University dfinster**At_Symbol_Here**wittenberg.edu -----Original Message----- From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of No rwood, Brad Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 9:03 AM To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Boston College incident follow up All, While there is *some* evidence that communication/culture barriers or diffe rences *might* have played a role here, in my mind the fundamental issue is training. Please understand - I am not harping on BC's training in particular, but EV ERY training program - except one - of which I've ever been a part. The fundamental truth is that when we get in a panic/emergency situation, i f this is the first time we've ever really thought about what we would do w e will almost inevitably do the wrong thing. This brings me to the ONE tra ining program that I've been involved in that (IMO) got things very nearly totally correct. Prepare to groan. The United States Navy (other branches may have similar systems, but after 20 years active and reserve, the Navy's is the one I'm familiar with). Emergency training in the Navy is focused on: 1) Simulation of actual events that have happened elsewhere (i.e. "We know what they did, but what would you do?") 2) Realistic scenarios of desperate (and, sometimes not so desperate) casua lties 3) Careful (if primitive) simulation of adverse conditions. Are you fighti ng a fire? Then smoke will obscure your view if it takes too long (and we would get green translucent plastic placed over the face shields of our Eme rgency Air Breather masks, and have to continue fighting the fire until it was out and the space was ventilated). 4) Repetition, repetition, repetition. 5) Review and discussion of how the responders handled the situation - what they did right, what they did wrong. In some cases, we turned right aroun d and repeated the drill if it was determined (in the oh-so-subjective opin ion of the Executive Officer) that the way the casualty was handled might h ave led to loss of life or even the entire boat (submarine). Our saying was, you fight like you train. This is true in warfare, but the focus was getting people "comfortable" with the emergency situation so tha t in the shock of a real casualty, we would switch into automatic mode and do things the way we had been trained. Ms. Cho was probably so flummoxed and surprised by what happened, that she defaulted to "I will go home and get my first aid kit". In the process of doing so, I'm also confident she walked past at least one other convenient first aid kit and a couple of phones on which she could have called for hel p (not to mention the cell phone that was undoubtedly in her pocket). I ha d a similar situation occur here at our lab, where *one month* after fire e xtinguisher training (putting out a real fire with a real fire extinguisher ), we had a minor fire in an instrument. The technician ran right past the CO2 fire extinguisher to get some water to throw on this *electronic* devi ce, thereby destroying a controller worth about $5K and a lost day of produ ctivity. So, to sum up: Don't look for additional placards or signs by the phone or language/cultural training to fix this problem. The fundamental issue her e is getting people to automatically think and act the way we need them to *in the moment of panic* when an actual accident occurs. This requires a f ar more realistic, frequent and site-specific kind of training. That also means that there is no "one size fits all" bureaucratic solution that shoul d (or can) be imposed from above. WE are the answer. Just my $0.02 Dr. Bradley K. Norwood Arista Laboratories, Inc. 1941 Reymet Road Richmond, VA 23237 (804) 271-5572 brad.norwood**At_Symbol_Here**aristalabs.com ************** D i s c l a i m e r *************** This e-mail message is confidential and may contain legally privileged info rmation. If you are not the intended recipient you should not read, copy, d istribute, disclose or otherwise use the information in this e-mail. Please also telephone us (804-271-5572), or fax us (804-271-5594), immediately an d delete the message from your system. E-mail may be susceptible to data co rruption, interception and unauthorized amendment, and we do not accept lia bility to such corruption, interception or amendment or the consequences th ereof. -----Original Message----- From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Se cretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:58 AM To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: [DCHAS-L] Boston College incident follow up Gail asked me to pass this along to the list as background for some of the discussion occurring here. I would also note that there is a lot of specula tion about the event in the media and blog-world; a summary can be found at http://cenblog.org/the-safety-zone/2011/06/boston-college-student-injured-i n-lab-explosion/ - Ralph From: Gail HallDate: Jun 27 2011 The Chemistry Department and EHS at Boston College train every graduate stu dent initially and annually to call Campus Safety in the event of an emerge ncy. There are signs at every phone. There is even a question on the quiz t hat they have to take to get their keys. At the moment we are still collecting information and don't have a cause fo r the explosion or a reason that the student acted as she did. We seem to have had our share of learning opportunities in the past 18 months, and I w ill share our hypotheses and/or conclusions on this one when we have been a ble to fully research the matter. I hate to think I have enough material f or an article in JCHAS, but it's beginning to look that way. In the meantime, if anyone has any ideas about sources of pictograms to hel p communicate certain things to students for whom English is the second lan guage, we'd appreciate the information. Gail Gail Hall Director, EH&S Boston College gail.hall**At_Symbol_Here**bc.edu 617-552-0300
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