Editorial pubs.acs.org/OPRD
Safety Culture in Industry and Academia
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incident this year as a basis for safety. I fervently hope they do not end up paying for this ignorance if someone should be injured or die. We should not, however, simply rely on the Dow initiative as a sole source of safety information. The web provides so much data that all can use, if one were to look. To return to the UCLA incident in 2009 and tert-butyllithium, the dangers of this substance were already well-known, and large-scale suppliers provided excellent handling procedures for the material at that time. There are even some interesting accounts about previous accidents by Derek Lowe in his informative blog “In the Pipeline”, some going back to 2007. Unfortunately, many companies and most universities are still not using the literature to find out more safety information (and not just MSDSs); for example, Bretherick’s Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards is a superb resource to access the literature with respect to safe handling of chemicals, in particular on the issues with scaling up. In the organic synthesis literature, I have seen so many unsafe procedures using perchloric acid/perchlorates and azides/hydrazoic acid, for example, that it is surprising there have not been more explosions in university laboratories. Yet a look through recent issues of Organic Process Research & Development (OPRD) will garner several fine articles which describe exactly the dangers of azides, how to overcome those dangers and to scale up the processes, as well as a book review on this topic. It is all in the literature, if only chemists would look. “You can take a horse to water ...” So in conclusion, please do look at the Dow web site to find out more about the safety academy but also do not forget to look at other literature, particularly that in OPRD, where the last issue of each year has a section especially devoted to safety issues.
he recent announcement that Professor Patrick Harran of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will go on trial in connection with the death in 2009 of a research assistant who was working with pyrophoric tert-butyllithium should focus everyone’s attention on laboratory safety and the safety culture in all organisations, not just universities. While most chemists will feel that, if Prof. Harran is convicted, sending him to jail for violating occupational health and safety laws will not, of itself, achieve a better safety culture in universities, the threat of a jail sentence certainly raises the profile of the discussions. Many universities and smaller companies may not know where to start to help engender the safety culture which has been common in industry for the past 40 years. To a small extent, I was involved in developing this culture in the 1970s as a part-time safety advisor for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), United Kingdom. Once the culture is in place, then it is easy to maintain high standards, but only if there is commitment from the top management or, in universities, from top academic professors as well as administrators. When I was teaching safety courses to new recruits, however, the lack of teaching materials, especially good films (in the days before video), was a major disadvantage; only the major oil companies and large chemical multinationals such as DuPont and ICI itself used to make an occasional film that was relevant. One company that prides itself on an excellent safety culture is the Dow Chemical Company. Recently they announced that they are making available to universities, or anyone else who needs access, the Dow Laboratory Safety Academy, a “digital learning environment that shares Dow’s best-in-class safety culture and practices in a quick and accessible format”, as the press release states. Readers are invited to explore the Web site, http://safety.dow.com, and see the range of videos and other resources available. I had a quick look this week and was impressed with the range of videos on special topics such as handling pyrophorics, cryogenics, nanoparticles, etc., as well as videos on reactive chemicals, energy calculations, management of change, and much more. Modules such as “Plan, Evaluate and Execute” all help to instill a safety culture, which means much more thinking and researching of the literature ahead of the experimentation. Dow are to be congratulated on making this comprehensive resource available to all. In universities this could form the basis of introductory and continuing education courses, provided that a committed tutor can be found. Exindustry staff who have already experienced this safety culture would be ideal tutors. Industry, however, should not be complacent. While the emphasis on developing a safety culture in most larger companies is high, particularly in Europe and North America, in a few smaller startup companies and in some countries, the safety culture needs to be drastically improved with a greater emphasis on education and training. For example, some companies I visit/audit still scale up processes without any understanding of the thermal hazards of working with larger equipment, relying on the fact that they have not had an © 2013 American Chemical Society
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Trevor Laird, Editor AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Published: June 21, 2013 951
dx.doi.org/10.1021/op400156s | Org. Process Res. Dev. 2013, 17, 951−951
