As an educator, I will chime in to compliment Ralph on his observation "already busy undergraduate curriculum".

Both freshman chemistry and organic chemistry have so many topics that need to be covered to meet the ACS accreditation requirements and prepare students for the ACS standard exam in each that these courses are taught at a pell-mell pace.  It's a huge complaint from students and is often misinterpreted as the instructor expecting too much or not caring about the students.  In the increasingly rare departments with traditional university support resources such as weekly sessions, student peer mentoring etc. in addition to lecture/lab, the traditional model can still work out OK but in many, if not most, schools these courses are taught by adjuncts with no sessions, limited office hours, and few tangible resources.  As a result, there's been a shift over the years from traditional lecture.  There are many different ways this has manifested itself, too numerous to list and going way off topic, but the general trend is towards the "flipped classroom" approach in which the lecture material is delivered outside of class (self-study, guided study, internet lectures etc.) and the focus in class is on the problem solving that students will need to pass their exams. There are intermediary approaches, too of course.  This approach provides new opportunities and challenges for safety, but I will stop here because that could easily fill several symposia to explore.

I mention this only because safety is another item that needs to be accommodated in the busy curriculum and the ACS's recent focus on safety adds to the pressure.  Safety material has always been pushed into the pre-class preparation, and I think most here can vouch to the zero to minimal lab preparation by many students. I have a colleague who will send students home if they have not written out their entire procedure in their notebooks before coming to class (simple transcription is forbidden) and frowns upon the lab manual being consulted in the lab.  Strictly speaking, it's the right way - if you're not prepared and don't understand the hazards/risks you should not be in the lab.  His approach does indeed work because two unexcused absences means failure for the course, making that first miss a very strong incentive to do it the right way.  Obviously, there are other ways to accomplish the same which include completing pre-lab modules and/or online training. But above all, the instructor still needs to telegraph the message that safety underlies everything we do in the lab and to discuss risk/hazard analysis with the students in the same manner as he or she might probe the students on the mechanism of the reaction they are performing.

Rob Toreki