Malcolm M. Renfrew University of ldaho MOSCOW. Idaho 83843
Highlighting Safety Practices to Students
whether greater safety in the academic laboratory can qualify as a genuinely new idea may be debatable, but it is clear that educational institutions now find it timely to do much more about health and safety than in the past. Some wise person has pointed out that the world makes use of new concepts only when the time is ripe for them, and it has been said that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Whether greater safety in the academic laboratory can aualifv as a eenuinelv new idea mav he debatable. hut it is ;]ear that e&cationil institutions now find it timely to do much more about health and safety than in years past. Prudent professors with a concern for their students, of course. alwavs have offered words of warning about hazards in thelaborkory. In earlier years, however;these cautions were not given in full-fledged safety Rather they . programs. . . tended t o h e spotty, as i n a well-known organic qualitative analysis text of fifty years ago which set in bold-face type a note about the dangers met in using dimethyl sulfate hut by implication gave clean hills of health to the many other organic reagents in the book. At least as far hack as 1935the American Chemical Society was holding safety symposia a t national meetings, and some were concerned with safety in schools and colleges. The ACS Council Committee on Chemical Safety was established 20 years ago. The ACS now has a new and growing Division of Health and Safety with programs a t each national meeting. (There is still need for larger numbers of chemical educators in the membership.) Back when safety concerns were simpler and easier to handle, we unfortunately did less than we should ahout controlling lahoratory hazards; fire, explosions, poisons, and electrical shock all were acute dangers, hut they could he limited by specific, easily developed practices. Today we have become aware of chronic hazards resulting from exposure to long-acting mutagens, teratogens, and carcinogens. We now recognize a critical need to do more about personal safety than in times past, hut our choices of what to do are much more complicated. The advent of OSHAwith its penalties for failure has focussed our attention on the problem. Teachers now are hearing safety questions for which they have no pat answers. Teaching by example is an effective tool of our profession. I t should concern all of us that we have provided so few good examples for students to emulate. Recently I visited a college in a state which by law requires the wearing of eye protection in lalxmtories. I wns star;led hv the numtiers f' faculty and s r u d m ~ s n o wenrin~nrceptableeye t prorertion. h l y guide told me that they were i n favor of wearing safety glasses in the laboratory, but that it was impossible in these times to enforce their use. Now I could assure them that in my own institution we have been quite successful in enforcing eye protection rules-in lower division lahoratories. But I had to confess that some of the same teaching assistants who enforce the wearing of safety glasses by freshmen and sophomores won't routinely wear eye protection in their own research laboratories. And in upper
division courses some instructors have been derelict in enforcing the departmental safety rules. It isn't that these instructors object to safety; they don't scoff a t students wearing eye protection. But they evidently grew up in the old school which specified safety glasses only when doing "dangerous experiments." I t isn't that they fight the wearing of eye protection; they just don't think about it. And in the laboratory they set poor examples as a result. Also we know that motion pictures offer an excellent device for highlighting safety to students. But quite often the educational movie makers have hurt rather than helped our cause. Cameramen don't like reflections from spectacles, and the chemist-actors often have neglected eye protection-we assume through ignorance or vanity. For example 1) In those well-conceived and well-intended Chem Study films of yesteryear eminent educators can be identified in laboratory shots
without eye protection. 2) When our own American Chemical Society some years ago made a widely used film in which Dr. Harold Urey discussed the moon there were laboratory scenes in which workers failed to take elementary safety precautions. When our ACS Safety Committee
complained, the film producer said that he wasn't trying to show things as they should be but rather as they were! After all the oratestine at that time. members of the Safetv Commitlre wrrr startled when a inruly produced i;lnb. "Clw~nistryand Man." m,w s h ~ n *!hi* snmr lark 01 nmron. , I n t h t upiuiun u i m w this film .ihtwld I ~ ~ L ( : I P Ia11 I X X X rating and kept away from young and impressionable students!) Another l a ~ s hv e r e ~ u t a b l epeople was noted a t the latest Chemical ~xpositionin Chicagb where a photo poster contest was put on by the Chemical Industries Council, Midwest, for high school students. The winning posters almost all involved ~hotographsof . voung- people protection . . without any . eve . . peeriig into lahoratory gear. And, to show the power of example, in the advertising material distributed to high schools by the Council in soliciting entries, past prizewinnFng photographs alsoshowed unprotected workers in situations fraught with peril! But now, with OSHA to remind us, we should be intent on huw to do things correctly rather than conrentrating un p a s failures. Pn~haldythere will he general agreement that an enthusiastic teacher who is concerned about the welfare of his students, and practices what he preaches, can best highlight safety to students. And how is this teacher to become enthusiastic about safety? It is a melancholy fact that chemists are most concerned about safety after an accident has occurred in their own lahoratory. And the worse the accident, the greater the reform! My personal good fortune took me to duPont fresh from my P h D work; duPont was one of the first industrial firms to Volume 55,Number 3. March 1978 / 145
College teachers may be motivated to do more about safety when enteringstudents arrive on the campus with greater awareness of good safety practices than those in years past.
develop a strong safety program. I soon learned t o shudder about t h e laboratory practices of m y graduate school days. But, even so, I didn't become a genuine, born-again missionary for safety until there was a man-killing accident in m y own group. Only t h e n did I appreciate fully the d e p t h of personal tragedy i n such a n event and the economic dislocations for employer a n d employee. Even now after 35 years I can still tell t h a t story with sufficient emotional impact t h a t i t truly highlights safety for students. W e suspect t h a t some teachers are going t o d o more about safety as a result of recognizing t h a t negligence i n the lahoratory may result in personal financial disaster (I).I also have t h e conviction t h a t college teachers will h e motivated t o d o more about safety when entering students s t a r t arriving on awareness of good safety practices t h a n campus with those in years past. A number of safety training courses for high school teachers are now o ~ e r a t i n eoften . o u t on hv local A&? sections. T h e New ~ o r k ~ u ~n sgs o c i a ~ oalso-offers n such a course. And a massive trainine Droeram which is t o reach 20,000 teachers in three years h a s L e n mounted by NIOSH in cooneration with the Council of State Science Sui course promises through t h e better pervisors. ~ h i 40-hour safety training of H S teachers t o produce a generation of students with enlarged safety sophistication. W h a t resources are available t o t h e teacher who wishes t o highlight safety t o students? I will name only three basic sources (which will rapidly lead t o others) 1) Chemical and Engineering News is easily available to all teachers and offers up-to-date commentary on the safety scene; letter reports of unusual accidents which warrant pasting on departmental
hulletin boards to alert local researchers. news reoorts on leaislation, m d infurmarim ahout nenlv rmgnizcd hrolth hazards which may nut wt have nflecld l~giilatnonhut ma? g:vr advance warning a b w uhat is ro nome- n l these atwurld in the C and E X pages. Why carry coals to Newcastle and recommend C and EN to chemistry teachers? I believe that we still need to convince some of our colleagues that this is a journal well worth their attention. I t now has wider acceotanee than in the 60's: the voune assistant professors of that day have grown older. Surely, for keeping current on safety matters C and EN now is a must. 2) Science in its news section covers much of this same material and with greater biological slanting. In a recent issue (2) they digested a report "Carcinogens in the Work Place," which must have startled many chemistry teachers. How many of us would earlier have identified among the ten most potent carcinogens used in industry these three: chromium. nickel. or acetamide? :
