How to Get a Message to All School Teachers:

To get a message about the dangers of the methanol "rainbow" demo to a large, distributed group such as "all middle school and high school teachers" I think it would be useful to find a common denominator that already exists among them.  Counting on the media, or congressional hearings or other sources that have access to a national stage are good ideas.     But along with broadcasting a message at a national level through Frontline or 60 Minutes news programs, I suggest using a communication network that already exists and that has ties specifically to teachers everywhere in the country.   There are one or two organizations that communicate with "all" classroom teachers routinely and often.   I think someone should approach the NEA and the AFT with a request to distribute to their members information of arguable value - "how to continue doing this popular chemistry demo without setting your students on fire any more".

 

 Sometimes I get carried away. 

I suggest a letter to NEA and AFT that says something along the lines of:

"For a number of years safety professionals and others in the American Chemical Society have noticed an alarming frequency of incidents in middle schools and high schools where students are being injured by the popular classroom science demonstration involving burning methyl alcohol and "rainbow" colors.   Every year there are a handful of news reports of students being taken to hospital emergency rooms with serious, sometimes life-threatening burns sustained from this specific procedure.    We believe this is due to widespread unfamiliarity among classroom teachers with the hazards of the materials used in this demonstration.     We are suggesting that you communicate with your members, especially middle school and high school science teachers, and provide them with information about the historical consequences of this procedure and detailed guidelines for performing it safely.    We are offering to provide technical guidance in crafting such guidelines with the hope that it reach as many class room teachers as possible who might choose to perform this demonstration.

This demonstration can be and has been performed many times without mishap, but the edge between fascination and disaster is very thin for this procedure.   Many science teachers, especially in K -12 education seem to be unaware of the dangers that come with it.

If you wish to participate in such an effort please contact …"

 

When it comes to offering technical guidance, I can see including the decision to not do the demonstration as one of the guideline options.

If my Google searching results are correct, there are about 3 million school teachers in the US and there are about 3 million members of NEA and AFT.  The totals I found are actually larger.  I suspect dual membership in these organizations.  In any case, I hypothesize that "all" K-12 school teachers can be efficiently reached through their unions.

Perhaps the offer could be contained in a letter written by the President of ACS.

Thanks for listening.