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Chemical Laboratory Safety in Higher EducationMARTIN A. WALKERPROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, POTSDAM
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Overview
General issues Students in the lab Bridging the hazard information gap Conclusion
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Hazard and risk
•“Highly flammable”•“Highly toxic by inhalation”
Hazard
•“Inhalation is extremely unlikely so risk is very low”Risk
By gynti_46 Flickr, CC-BY-SA 2.0
By Mark Hope, Geograph, CC-BY-SA 2.0
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Immediate vs. long term hazard
•“It will spontaneously catch fire”
Acute hazard
•“Regular exposure over several years may cause cancer”
Chronic hazard
By gynti_46 Flickr, CC-BY-SA-NC 2.0
Public domain
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Chemical laboratory hazards
•Found in Safety Data Sheets (SDSs), e.g.,“Ethanol is flammable”
Substance hazards
•“The sand bath is very hot”
Equipment hazards
•“Mixing ethanol and nitric acid may cause a major explosion”
Process hazards
Public domain
Pic by Cjp24CC-BY-SA 3.0
Pic by RudolfSimonCC-BY-SA 3.0
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Chemical laboratory precautions
•“Wear safety goggles”
General precautio
ns
•“Add the butyllithium slowly, or there will be a runaway reaction”
Experiment-specific
precautionsPic from PLOS, CC-BY-SA
Pic by Compliance and Safety LLC, CC-BY-SA
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Students are just learning!
Students are usually unfamiliar with the lab environment, and may not understand what they’re doing
BUT Safety information is aimed at
safety professionals, not beginners – so much responsibility lies with the instructor
Picture by FelipeIbazetaWikimedia CommonsCC-BY-SA 3.0 From Wikipedia
CC-BY-SA 3.0
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Protection vs. Education We want to keep our
students safeBUT
We want them to learn to work with hazardous chemicals safely
We want them to learn to read basic safety information
By Simon Davis/DFIDFrom FlickrCC-BY-SA-3.0
Picture by Rudy Conrad/SUNY PotsdamUsed with permission
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The teaching lab
General “safety talk” covers basic information
Expt-specific hazards are assessed in advance
Hazards are mostly known, but students are beginners
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Hazard information for the teaching lab
Published experiments will usually have substance hazards given, but often little on equipment hazards or process hazards
However, any major hazards will have been identified and described. Dangerous procedures will not be used
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Undergraduate research More formal, in-depth training used for
general hazards Students are more experienced,
knowledgable, and familiar with equipmentBUT
Hazards are more unpredictable and serious, esp. if no formal review is done
Some substance information is often available, but little process information
Almost every experiment is different
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COSHH In labs in the UK, the law
requires a COSHH assessment. This ensures that every experiment performed receives at least a cursory hazard assessment.
By UK Health & Safety Executive, Crown Copyright
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Chemical storage & handling Many chemicals have associated hazards =>
specific storageAcidsFlammablesHighly toxic materialsPeroxide formers
Incompatible chemicals should be kept separateOxidizing & reducing agentsAcids & bases
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The hazard information gap
Expert information often fails to reach the student in the
lab
From Flickr, by U.S. Army RDECOM , CC-BY-SA 2.0
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Current sources of hazard information
See Grace Baysinger’s talk for more complete information!
For substance information, the usual reference is the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), formerly called an MSDS. Safety cards are also useful. Available for all manufactured substances.
For information on reactivity hazards, the only major reference is “Bretherick's Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards.” Unfortunately, this only lists recorded incidents, and it is proprietary. Pic by Jeffrey M. Vinocur
CC-BY-SA-3.0
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Why the gap?
Chemists are principally trained (and interested!) in chemistry – not chemical safety or toxicology
Much hazard information is held in proprietary sources
When an incident occurs, the causes may be unknown, and the event may be “hushed up” Pic by William Grimes,
Public Domain
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What is needed
An open and comprehensive database of chemical hazard information
Different types of hazard should be searchable Acute vs chronic Substance vs process
Information should be presented in a way that is clear for working chemists & students
Ideally, there should also be predictive tools for prophetic substances/procedures
From Flickr by techsrc2371, CC-BY-SA-2.0
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iRAMP project
Aims to collate information and present it via smartphone or computer at point of use Substance data from SDSs & known
incidents Process information from known incidents Based on chemical ontologies, with
controlled vocabulary to describe process operations
Diagrams by Ralph Stuart, iRAMP
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Conclusions
Educational institutions have different issues than professional laboratoriesExperiments are often more controlled, but
students are beginners and may do “silly things”
Hazard information may not be easily accessible, especially by the student
A more open, comprehensive and user-friendly resource is needed for hazard information
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ye Li and Donna Wrublewski for the invitation
The iRAMP project is organized by Ralph Stuart and Leah McEwan
All pictures are under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license unless otherwise stated. Pictures without credit are my own, also CC-BY-SA-3.0
Thanks for listening!