Experimenting with Danger
update 6/2/2024: this was imported from a blog I kept on the University of Cincinnati home page service that they offered to students. Its’ been removed now, how rude, but lucky for me the web archive captured a single snapshot.
We watched a safety video in class today called “Experimenting with Danger” which was created by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. It was kind of eye opening because I have used many of the same chemicals that were discussed in this video and didn’t really think anything of it. I also rarely wear my labcoat in the lab which doesn’t make any sense because I always wear the labcoat in the stock room which has much less dangerous chemicals.
I think they key idea is that there needs to be a culture of safety. As cheesy as that sounds, it needs to be “cool” to wear goggles and lab coats. The entire premise behind research is that we don’t know what we are doing. We are making compounds thast do not have an MSDS because they have never been synthesized before. We take a lot of this for granted, over the last few months safety has been the last thing on my mind when I am in the lab.
I am glad we watched this video because it reinforced the importance of lab safety, it is a real shame that these tragic accidents occured but I hope they continue to be a lesson from which the scientific community can learn and grow from their mistakes.
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