Hi Kim - Your chair might want to take a look at the document released last fall,

http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i37/Analyzing-Laboratory-Hazards.html

The Chair of our Chemistry Department Safety Committee asked me to post this to this list. Thanks for any & all responses. 

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Dear DCHAS members,

Hello! I am chair of the safety committee in the Chemistry department at Stony Brook.  We had an incident recently where a student was performing an exothermic reaction that overheated and subsequently had some splashback.  The splash was small, the student was working in the hood and wearing the proper PPE, and he was fine.  But as a department we would like to develop some "best practices" to help avoid incidents like this in the future.  Our problem is that most of the recommendations that are out there refer to scaling up reactions that have already been performed on a small scale, where the properties of the components and heats of reaction are well-known.  I am a chemical engineer by training, so I'm very familiar with scale up, calculations for runaway reactions, and so on.  This is not what we are looking for.  What about when students are synthesizing a completely new target?  What guidelines can we give them to help prevent overheating and a dangerous situation?  We are struggling with how to apply the recommendations we have found in the context of academic organic research labs,. 

I'd like some feedback, particularly from academic members of the listserve, on guidelines, recommendations, or "best practices" you have in place for performing new exothermic reactions in the lab.  You can respond directly to my email, which is surita.bhatia**At_Symbol_Here**stonybrook.edu.  I will compile what I receive and share it with the listserve for those who are interested. 

Thank you,
Surita Bhatia

Stony Brook Chemistry

--------------
Kim Gates
Laboratory Safety Specialist
Environmental Health & Safety
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-6200
Kim.Gates**At_Symbol_Here**stonybrook.edu
631-632-3032
FAX: 631-632-9683
EH&S Web site: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ehs/lab/

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