Academic Lab Safety Under Exam

Johnson, Jeff; Kemsley, Jyllian

doi:10.1021/cen-v089n043.p025

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Alongside the growth of the LST movement has been a parallel movement to find ways to transition the roles of safety professionals from being merely the “compliance police” to more of a partnership role with departments in supporting better (and safer) research. These strategies have manifested in many ways including changes to how EH&S personnel do business, the establishment of Research Safety offices, and the use of embedded safety professionals within research departments. ,,,− Anecdotally, the success of these campaigns is highly variable in research universities throughout the US, leading to a multitude of approaches to safety. There is also very little in the published literature regarding the institutions’ experiences with these new approaches although the need for understanding the impact of these changes is great.…”

Section: Establishing Your Lstmentioning

confidence: 99%

Starting and Sustaining a Laboratory Safety Team (LST)

Martin

Miller

Pinkhassik

2020

ACS Chem. Health Saf.

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The laboratory safety team (LST) movement was triggered in 2012 by Dow Chemical’s exploration of ways to strengthen academic research safety culture from the bottom up. This necessitated a new form of leadership from graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. This movement has been spreading throughout chemistry and engineering academic research departments in the United States in a grassroots fashion. However, few publications exist providing the details of LST structure and activities. In this paper, we share results from interviews with 16 currently active teams and outline a best practices guide for starting and sustaining LST programs. Interviews yielded five common components that have been identified as useful to establishing an LST as well as six top common challenges. Strategies to overcome these challenges through proper documentation of activities, maximizing relationships within the academic hierarchy, and developing meaningful safety culture metrics to track are discussed. This paper showcases the power of connecting players in the various active LSTs and emphasizes the need for quantifiable and trackable metrics in the next wave of the movement.

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Section: Establishing Your Lstmentioning

confidence: 99%

Starting and Sustaining a Laboratory Safety Team (LST)

Martin

Miller

Pinkhassik

2020

ACS Chem. Health Saf.

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“…Recently, numerous accidents have been reported from the wet laboratories of many universities in several countries (Johnson and Kemsley, 2011;Eldridge, 2012;and Jia, 2016). As a result, the state of safety within university wet labs is questioned by academic and safety professionals (Eldridge, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, the state of safety within university wet labs is questioned by academic and safety professionals (Eldridge, 2012). In fact, the literature suggests that more attention should be directed toward examining the safety conditions in today's academic labs (Richards-Babb, Bishoff, Carver, Fisher, & Robertson-Honecker, 2010;and Johnson & Kemsley, 2011). Therefore, this thesis focuses on addressing the following research question: what is the state of safety within the wet laboratories of a Canadian university?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The current state of safety within the wet laboratories of a Canadian academic institution

Ayi¹

2021

Preprint

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Working in an academic laboratory (lab) often involves handling hazardous substances (Shariff & Norazahar, 2012). These substances are dangerous due to their toxic, flammable, explosive, carcinogenic, pathogenic or radioactive properties (Furr, 2000). Therefore, it is crucial that those working in these environments do so safely. Recently, many researchers and students from various universities in the U.S. and globally have suffered severe injuries and fatalities from lab accidents. For example, in 2008 a lab fire at the University of California Los Angeles led to the death of a student(Van Noorden, 2011). Following this and other similar accidents that transpired afterwards, an international study was conducted to understand the state of safety within the wet labs of today’s universities(Van Noorden, 2013a). The findings revealed numerous safety gaps and an overall lack of a strong and positive safety culture within the labs (Benderly, 2013;and Schröder, Huang, Ellis, Gibson, & Wayne, 2016). Since the majority of the accidents and study reports were predominantly from the U.S., it is unknown if the same safety gaps and risks also exist in the wet labs of Canadian universities. Therefore, this research study examined the state of safety within the wet laboratories of a medium-sized Canadian university. This was achieved by: 1) conducting an inventory of the labs’ hazardous substances to identify their labeling and storage conditions, 2) inspecting the labs to identify potential hazards or risky conditions, and 3) surveying lab personnel to understand how safety is perceived and practiced. The results show several safety deficiencies and a negative perception on certain safety elements among the lab personnel. As in universities in the U.S. there is an overall need to enhance thecurrent culture of safety at this Canadian university.

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“…Many articles have criticized safety practices in academic laboratories and the lack of training and resources for improving lab safety. − This extends to using compressed gases in the lab. Only recently has lab safety training begun to include information related to gas cylinder safety.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compressed Gas Safety at the University

Ngai

2020

J. Chem. Educ.

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Academic institutions are faced with the complex problem of accurately determining the hazards associated with a proposed or ongoing project. For many reasons, compressed gas safety can be a significant challenge at universities, especially those that involve research using many uncommon materials. This article is a call to action for implementing better safety practices when using compressed gases and helps to fill the gap on resources related to compressed gases. General operating procedures and resources for safe practices when using compressed gases are outlined in this article, as well as lessons learned from incidents involving compressed gases.

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Academic Lab Safety Under Exam

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Starting and Sustaining a Laboratory Safety Team (LST)

Starting and Sustaining a Laboratory Safety Team (LST)

The current state of safety within the wet laboratories of a Canadian academic institution

Compressed Gas Safety at the University

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