Wow! What an amazing thread this has been!
I remember my graduate advisor telling me about a graduate course in organic chemistry he took at Case Western Reserve back in the Dark Ages. He had an unknown to identify, and had to identify the chirality as well. He determined it was lactose, but didn't feel like determining how it bent light. He identified it as D-lactose by tasting it, and reporting that it tasted sweet. Fortunately, he didn't get a passing grade.
When our school districts decided that mercury and mercury compounds had to be removed from all schools, I got some serious backlash from 1) teachers who decided we were dumbing down the curriculum and 2) administrators who claimed 'for crying out loud, I used to play with mercury as a kid!" (translation'I don't want to pay for removal).
To the teachers, I pointed out that the elemental mercury posed more of a hazard to the teacher than to the students. My logic was, the students are here about an hour a day for one school year. The teacher is in the room all day every day, year after year. The hazard of concern with mercury is the toxic fumes'you do the math. (of course, there are many more issues at stake, but for the purpose of convincing teachers of the need, it worked!)
For the administrators, my answer was, "yeah, and when I began my career in microbiology, I kept an ashtray next to my microscope. I wouldn't do that anymore either." (smoke while working with micro-organisms, or smoke period).
I frequently quote Maya Angelou: Do the best you can, until you know better. Then when you know better, DO BETTER!!!
Eddie McGrath
Edward J. McGrath
Supervisor of Science
Red Clay Consolidated School District
1502 Spruce Avenue
Wilmington DE 19805
(302) 552-3768
We did not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrowed it from our children.
From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**med.cornell.edu]On Behalf Of Monona Rossol
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 9:41 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] A mid-winter Lab Safety koan
OF COURSE they described taste. They even drank the stuff to see what would happen. Hell, they believed everything they discovered must be wonderful. Radium even glowed so let's put it in patent medicines and paint dials with it. The Curies both died of cancer and both refused to believe their cancers, or the cancers of their colleagues, had anything to do with radium.
The best example is the discovery of phenolphthalein in 1871 by Adolf von Baeyer. He drank some and got a serious case of the Aztec two-step. Did that damp his enthusiasm? Hell no. He declared phenolphthalein the world's greatest laxative and got rich. No one studied it until 1992 when it was found to be one of the most potent carcinogens ever studied and FDA banned it in laxatives. Ex-Lax ads at the time only said they had switched to "natural senna" because it is gentle. And if senna is not specially treated, the natural form contains an anthraquinone that is undoubtedly also a carcinogen. But no one seems to care.
Let's just summarize the problem again as I stated it here before:
Chemists know all about what happens when you mix chemical A with chemical B.
Chemists are clueless about what happens when you mix chemical A with me.
If formal training in toxicology is not included in chemistry at every level, this will NEVER end.
Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., Industrial Hygienist
President: Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
Safety Officer: Local USA829, IATSE
New York, NY 10012 212-777-0062
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Van Scoy <bvanscoy**At_Symbol_Here**TWC.COM>
To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU>
Sent: Wed, Feb 17, 2016 9:11 pm
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] A mid-winter Lab Safety koan
Ralph,
Early in my career I ran across a reference book of chemical properties. The
test was a peer reviewed textbook considering the properties of organic
chemicals. I think it was published in the 50's, but that is from memory
only! At the time I found it confusing yet amazing that the chemical
properties being described included a description of "Taste". I wish that I
would have had the foresight to document the title, author, etc., and
obtained a copy of that reference book, since it was readily apparent that
organic chemists would routinely taste their results and document their
"observations" and absolutely this does tell us something about their risk
culture.
My observations/conclusions were:
1) They thought they were practicing science. Show me the evidence that
safety was even in their respective vocabulary at that time, except for how
to complete a reaction, process, etc. without an explosion. I don't think
they knew of or even considered long term consequences. Additionally, I
hypothesize that their research was so focused on their respective field of
expertise, that they were not aware of the discoveries in toxicology,
industrial hygiene, occupational exposures that were occurring elsewhere.
Please notice that this is a hypothesis with no valid scientific data to
support, only knowledge of what occurred and I am open to correction!
2) They were not aware of the safety risks or consequences. Consider how
much actual circulation of peer-reviewed published articles occurred at that
time with the methods used to convey that information. It is an absolute
opposite from today with the advent of the internet and almost instantaneous
communications!
3) There were no standards recognized, in-place or followed that would have
prohibited the practice. Yes, ACGIH existed, and they had published
exposure levels for a very limited number of chemicals decades prior to
OSHA. This is no-where near close to comparing what these organic chemists
were comparing, evaluating and documenting.
Who made the connection between scientific observation relating to
occupation hazard or disease at that time? You may want to consider the
co-development of the field of Toxicology, in relation to the timeframe!
4) The chemists were following the acceptable practices from their time,
and those practices would not be considered acceptable today. We are all
continuously learning, while the standards and what is considered acceptable
exposure levels change as well (some more than others.) You may want to
review the continued progress of the ACGIH TLV Committee to update the TLVs,
(caveat, ACGIH member since 1984) compared to OSHA's update of the PELs,
application of NIOSH-RELs, or even the German MAKs.
5) See #1. Scientists don't know until they/we learn from their
lessons/mistakes.
You asked for comments or insights so I'm providing my observations only.
I would be glad to see the compilation of the results received!
BruceV
From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**med.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of
Stuart, Ralph
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 10:13 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: [DCHAS-L] A mid-winter Lab Safety koan
I was stuck in the house last weekend due to frigid temperatures and a bad
case of the flu, so I managed to catch up on some skimming of potentially
interesting books I had brought home from the library. At the risk of
revealing my inner nerd, one was "Modern Organic Synthesis in the
Laboratory: A Collection of Standard Experimental Procedures", looking for
safety advice being given to chemistry majors in 2007.
In section 1.1.2 on "Material Safety Data Sheets" (in Section 1.1, helpfully
titled "Safety!"), the authors note:
"Gone are the days when a chemist could smoke a cigarette in the laboratory.
Arthur J. Birch was photographed smoking a cigar while demonstrating an
ether extraction, which is unthinkable today."
End of section; the next section is "Never Taste Chemicals".
The question that came to my mind while reading this was:
Why did the authors feel the need to note Mr. Birch's lab habits in this
context?
Does this choice tell us something about the risk culture being established
by the text?
(An interesting irony of this observation is that the introductory sentence
of the MSDS section advises that caution is particularly warranted for
"reactive chemicals, carcinogens and toxic reagents". However, the example
they used to illustrate the point is presumably related to the flammability
of ether, rather than those particular hazards of the situation)
Anyway, I've been thinking about this question long enough that I needed to
write it out and share it before it will go away...
Comments and insights would be appreciated.
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Chemical Hygiene Officer
Keene State College
ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu
