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From: "Secretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety" <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] CENBlog The Safety Zone: A caution on procedures in organic synthesis journals
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 07:15:59 +0000
Reply-To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU>
Message-ID: 322F6AE6-9278-42F5-A1D1-314895F45FA9**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
http://cenblog.org/the-safety-zone/2013/07/a-caution-on-procedures-in-organic-synthesis-journals/
A caution on procedures in organic synthesis journals
Organic Process Research and Development editor Trevor Laird, founder of Scientific Update, recently penned an editorial on ‰??Safety Culture in Industry and Academia‰??. I‰??ll highlight one particular paragraph:
"Unfortunately, many companies and most universities are still not using the literature to find out more safety information (and not just MSDSs); for example, Bretherick‰??s Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards is a superb resource to access the literature with respect to safe handling of chemicals, in particular on the issues with scaling up. In the organic synthesis literature, I have seen so many unsafe procedures using perchloric acid/perchlorates and azides/hydrazoic acid, for example, that it is surprising there have not been more explosions in university laboratories. Yet a look through recent issues of Organic Process Research & Development (OPRD) will garner several fine articles which describe exactly the dangers of azides, how to overcome those dangers and to scale up the processes, as well as a book review on this topic.‰??
There‰??s clearly a challenge here for researchers to figure out what‰??s a safe procedure and what isn‰??t. Just because a journal published something doesn‰??t mean it‰??s been vetted for safety. Is there a good way to teach students to be appropriately skeptical of literature procedures? Also, aside from using Bretherick‰??s and OPRD, are there other good resources for people trying to evaluate a procedure for safety?
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