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Previous by Date: Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] [EXTERNAL] [DCHAS-L] Safety awareness Date: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 at 1:46:13 AM Author: Hugo Gerald Schmidt <000016ca169b2168-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**LISTS.PRINCETON.EDU> |
Next by Date: Subject: [DCHAS-L] Chemical Safety headlines (10 articles) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2022 06:38:30 -0400 Author: Ralph Stuart |
Dear Sarah,
Spot on.
I try to teach students that safety and good science are indivisible. An accident is, by definition, something you didn't want to happen, an experimental failure. There are way more ways for an experiment to fail than for it to fail dangerously, so accidents are a likely symptom that you've not had things under control, i.e., that your science isn't all it might be.
Safety arises from understanding the whole experimental process as fully as you can, and controlling it to the very best of your ability.
Best,
Dr Hugo G. Schmidt
Lab Manager, Cambridge CARES
Tel.: +65 9018 2051
________________________________________ Sarah, Very well stated, this is one of the best responses I have read on this thread in years. I‰??m a safety professional, not a chemist and your response cuts to the heart of what I‰??ve learned over decades ‰?? we need to teach the what, how and why safety is important, instead of focusing on generic rules. I still do not think it is taught well enough. Yes, it is easier to teach ‰??rules‰?? but were missing the point on how and why they became rules to begin with! Safety has been built upon experience. More often than not negative experiences or sheer ignorance. You included a great example below regarding SDSs, no testing does not mean safe, it just means untested. Our regulations are built to ‰??assume‰?? safe, unless proven otherwise without requiring the testing needed to properly classify. By law, NEPA only applies to federal agencies, but the foundational concepts are sound and I‰??ve wondered why they have not applied to commercial chemicals as well, e.g., endocrine disruptors, forever chemicals, etc. All profitable in the short term, but significantly costly in the long term, and some of that litigation is just beginning. I believe EPA Superfund is broke so who is going to pay for these medical impacts, cleanups, etc.? Since I‰??m only a safety professional, I don‰??t have to publish or perish and cannot address HOW the selectivity of only publishing successful articles evolved. But I can say from experience, we‰??ve tried to advertise/publish those ‰??negative consequences‰?? over the years ‰?? typically involved with accident investigations from catastrophic failures. We have not learned yet. You made your point well! Thank you, Bruce Van Scoy, CSP From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety 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! 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 ! 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, Thanks for the interesting stats Ralph. Steve Stepenuck, ret. •ÈÀOn 7/25/22, 7:54 AM, "ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety on behalf of Ralph Stuart" > 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 - Ralph Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO --- --- ---
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From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 6:45 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety awareness
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2022 2:14 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Safety awareness
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.
or a different reaction?
Sarah
On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 4:32 AM steve
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.
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**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org
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