DCHAS-L Archives, Jul 26 2022 - Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety awareness

Joseph,

I see what you are trying to say, certainly, and I also have raged (many times) against the way we approach safety and how our approach often does little but stand in the way of work being done-but I disagree quite substantially with many of things you've said. In particular, I disagree quite intensely with your assessment that "it is most important for the chemistry to work..." and that "if the chemistry doesn't work, there is no point in 'safety' as the work oughtn't even be performed." Firstly, knowledge and progress aren't measured in success. Though we refuse to publish null results and we certainly won't award degrees for unsuccessful experiments-we should. In fact, only publishing positive results is a huge problem that itself is impeding our progress. Secondly, in most (but of course not all) domains of chemistry education and research, progress should not be more important-nor should it be equally as important-as safety and environmental responsibility. This mindset has led us down some pretty bad paths already. We've flooded our environment with endocrine disrupting compounds that are causing huge popuation-wide health changes in the name of "progress" and "efficiency," releasing commercial products with very little knowledge about their health effects. We're also completely ignorant of chronic, long-term, systemic dangers, seeing mostly only acute, intense, and obvious ones. In many cases, we wildly underestimate the dangers-and inhabiting the mindset you advocate certainly won't help change that. A sparse SDS doesn't necessarily mean it's safe-it means it's unknown.

Rather, to me, the problem is an over-reliance on regulation and simple rule-following and an under-reliance on responsibility and common sense. There have been multiple times in my life where both my progress and my actual safety have been impeded by "safety regulations." We need to teach, practice, and embody responsibility in the chemical sciences. Rather than imparting simple and poorly-motivated rules to undergrads that forbid shaking sep funnels, we should educate them on the dangers of the equipment, the dangers of certain reactions, their responsibility to engage in safe behaviors, and how to equip themselves with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. For example, at the very least, people should be thinking critically about what's happening in the sep funnel. WHY does pressure build in a sep funnel? What solvents will build pressure faster? What are the best strategies for avoiding over-pressure? When should you move to a different extraction approach or a different reaction?

Yes, we should do better in our approach to safety. No, we should not prioritize progress as much as safety (especially since, well, we already do).

Best,

Sarah

On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 4:32 AM steve <sstepenuck**At_Symbol_Here**ne.rr.com> wrote:

Descriptive chemistry was indeed disappearing from high school chem--and from college General Chemistry. More to our point--when I introduced my chemical safety and health course in 1976, a not-infrequent response on end-of-semester course evaluation forms was something like "I'm a senior chem major. How come this is the first I'm hearing about any of this stuff?"
Let us hope and continue to work toward a day when that sad situation is no longer.

Thanks for the interesting stats Ralph.

Steve Stepenuck, ret.

On 7/25/22, 7:54 AM, "ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety on behalf of Ralph Stuart" <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU on behalf of ralph**At_Symbol_Here**RSTUARTCIH.ORG> wrote:

> If the chemistry doesn't work then there is no point in "safety" - the work oughtn't even be performed.

The extraction story describes an important "safety" challenge - transferring techniques between the educational lab and the research setting requires a careful thought and risk assessment, which is likely to be beyond the scope of an undergraduate's skill set. That is one reason that undergraduates can benefit from systematic safety education as part of their science experience, but learning that they will need continuing lab safety education and discussion is an important take away from the undergraduate years.

>At very least, HS science should provide the student with the basic safety ideas to survive in the modern world.

My experience with HS chemistry in the 1970's is that "descriptive chemistry" such as those examples was leaving the high school curriculum in favor of atomic theory and other more general concepts. Hazmat information was not part of the high school curriculum then. According to the data at
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=97
70% of high school students take a chemistry course (up from 50% in 1990), but I'd be surprised if this classwork includes much hazardous materials information.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org

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