Chemical Education Today
Editorial Safety Pays
Photo by Stanley H. Pine and William Wimberley
Paying attention to potential hazards and promoting safe procedures and practices in classrooms and laboratories is something we all should do—all the time. Anyone who has lived through a serious accident and its aftermath never wants to do it again. Students are often turned on to science and chemistry by interesting, instructive activities, demonstrations, and laboratories. But they may also be turned off by the negative publicity that immediately surrounds any accident. With a little ingenuity, we ought to be able to come up with fascinating activities that meet standards for safety that are appropriate for the level of the students who will be involved in them. Actively promoting safety is like investing in the stock market. It pays off in the long run. When I was an undergraduate working at a summer job with a chemical company, I was impressed by the attention paid to safety, which went far beyond what I experienced in my undergraduate or graduate academic institutions. However, what was considered safe or unsafe years ago has changed dramatically—toward greater consciousness of hazards and ways to avoid them. Even what was common practice yesterday may not meet everyone’s criteria today, or it may not be appropriate under different circumstances. None of us should ever become complacent, stop trying to identify hazardous situations, or worse, denigrate the efforts of those who do. JCE publishes a statement in most issues (see p 74) to remind readers “to make choices and to develop procedures for laboratory and classroom safety in accordance with local needs and situations.”
Scene from a fire in an academic laboratory.
Searching for the keyword “safety” in the JCE Index online turned up 559 articles—the first in 1925, our second year of publication. Safety has been an important concern throughout the Journal’s history. Readers continue to request more safety information, and authors continue to submit relevant manuscripts, such as the recent description of a serious fire (1). In addition to the long-running Safety Tips column, we now publish Accident Anecdotes, brief descriptions of accidents. Written by Jay A. Young, a safety consultant and former college-level teacher of chemistry, each anecdote is intended to remind us to beware of hazardous situations. Soon JCE will begin publishing concise descriptions of the properties and hazards of commonly used substances. These are
intended to be With a little ingenuity, we more relevant to teachers and more ought to be able to come up readily understandable than the dewith fascinating activities that tailed information provided in Matemeet standards for safety… rial Safety Data Sheets. But information in JCE is not enough. Each of us ought to think safety in everything we do. As noted in Emory Howell’s column (p 9), accidents similar to ones described on these pages still happen. For example, JCE recently published a description of the “whoosh bottle” demonstration (2), thoroughly documenting the hazards and describing how the demonstration can be done safely. Nevertheless, a whoosh bottle gone awry was recently reported in the media (3). JCE has also documented the hazards of using large containers of alcohol (or other flammable solvents) to fill burners or near open flames (4), but there are still fires and explosions involving alcohols and other solvents. These and many other accidents could have been prevented, but were not—sometimes because of lack of knowledge of the hazard, and sometimes because such knowledge was ignored. Rather than casting blame, we should recognize that none of us knows or does everything that would help us to avoid accidents. And then we should do something about it. It is also crucial that we share safety information effectively with colleagues throughout the educational system. Find out who needs the information and actively work with them. You are certainly welcome to photocopy safety articles from our pages and send them to colleagues in your own or other institutions. Even better would be face-to-face meetings from time to time at which you could interact with other professionals to discuss safety and other issues. It is more crucial that each of us actively and vigilantly consider our own activities to imagine things that could go wrong and make certain that they do not. I hope that through the pages of JCE you will be able to find the safety information you need, and that it will be effective in helping you avoid accidents. Please do whatever you can to contribute, collect, and pass along such information to everyone who can use it. More importantly, make certain that you yourself use it effectively and creatively. Safety pays, so let’s pay attention to it! Literature Cited 1. Pine, S. H. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 547. 2. Fortman, J. J.; Rush, A. C.; Stamper, J. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1092. 3. Herron, A. B. The Herald Journal, Cache County, UT, November 3, 2000 (http://www.hjnews.com/archive/text/ index.html ). 4. Young, J. A. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 1488.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 1 January 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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