From: "Stuart, Ralph" <Ralph.Stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Mercury
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2015 18:16:10 +0000
Reply-To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU>
Message-ID: 3E1D7706-8896-47A0-AAE7-86ED312C8D45**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu
In-Reply-To <1B6A9D383A771846BE7E63C1D8758E2F404D2D36**At_Symbol_Here**aims-mbx-02.aims.wisc.edu>


>Many of the people in these lines of work are not really into chemistry, certainly not very curious about the interesting stuff, and want the job to be as straight-forward as possible.
>
Another element that I‰??m observed in these situations, and that is well-illustrated by yesterday‰??s event (as well as the Ebola responses last year) is that the victim‰??s welfare is not the top priority in many of these events - the community‰??s emotional concern about a buzzword hazard such as mercury can trump that. This can lead to a significantly traumatizing experiences for people who call for help (washing a kid for 2.5 hours for a Hg spill?) and I have seen the social impact of that when witnesses to a lab event swear that they would never call for help themselves in case of a lab spill.

This is becoming an increasingly tricky element for the lab EHS community to address as the public becomes increasingly concerned about bio and meth labs that they don‰??t understand...

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Chemical Hygiene Officer
Keene State College

ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu

Previous post   |  Top of Page   |   Next post



The content of this page reflects the personal opinion(s) of the author(s) only, not the American Chemical Society, ILPI, Safety Emporium, or any other party. Use of any information on this page is at the reader's own risk. Unauthorized reproduction of these materials is prohibited. Send questions/comments about the archive to secretary@dchas.org.
The maintenance and hosting of the DCHAS-L archive is provided through the generous support of Safety Emporium.