Giving the Whole Rat: Recognizing the People Who Make Science Safer

by | Sep 3, 2026 | Lab Safety | 0 comments

Pensive lab rat

Several years ago, Jim Firebaugh, then the Virginia State Science Supervisor, and I were traveling across the state in a blue Department of Education van, running one-day science seminars. It was during one of these trips that a stop at a Dollar Tree store changed how I thought about laboratory safety.

In the toy aisle, I found plastic squeeze rats for a dollar each.

I bought two.

For years, I had been fond of saying a rather provocative phrase to get people's attention:

“Chemistry faculty in the United States—present company excluded, of course—don't give a rat's rear for lab safety.”

Why would I say something so harsh?

Because of an experience that stayed with me. In November 1995, at a Boston University National Chemistry Week Career Day, I asked chemistry majors and graduate students whether they had seen the American Chemical Society's Safety in Academic Chemistry Laboratories (SACL). By my count that day, about 90% had not.

These were bright, promising young scientists from institutions across New England, yet many were unfamiliar with a readily available ACS laboratory safety resource.

That observation was not a scientific survey. It was, however, a powerful reminder to me that simply making safety information available does not mean people will know about it, understand it, or use it.

ACS continues to offer Safety in Academic Chemistry Laboratories, now in its 8th edition, as a foundational resource for undergraduate chemistry safety. Its approach deliberately moved beyond safety based primarily on lists of rules toward learning to recognize hazards, assess risks, minimize risks, and prepare for emergencies—the RAMP framework.

 

What We Have Learned Since Then

The laboratory safety field has changed considerably since that 1995 Career Day.

A widely cited 2013 international survey reported an important disconnect between researchers' perceptions of laboratory safety and their experiences. Among more than 2,300 respondents, most considered safety important and regarded their laboratories as safe, yet many also reported injuries, significant incidents, or gaps in hazard-specific training.

That survey is now more than a decade old, so it should not be treated as a snapshot of laboratory safety today. Its central question, however—why knowledge, rules, and good intentions do not always translate into safer work—continues to matter.

Current research is giving us a more complete answer.

A 2026 review in ACS Chemical Health & Safety examined why safety problems continue in academic laboratories despite widespread use of regulations, standard operating procedures, inspections, and formal training. The authors found that persistent problems cannot be explained simply by people failing to follow rules. Everyday safety outcomes are influenced by the interaction of hazards, human behavior, training, supervision, competing priorities, institutional governance, resources, and the way work is actually performed.

That is an important evolution in our thinking. Safety is not something separate that we add onto science after the work has been designed. Safety is part of how good science gets done.

 

RAMP: From Rules to Risk Management

One important development has been the continued growth of RAMP:

  • Recognize hazards
  • Assess the risks of those hazards
  • Minimize the risks
  • Prepare for emergencies

RAMP remains central to ACS laboratory-safety education. ACS's 2026 third edition of Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students continues to organize laboratory safety education around RAMP, with increased emphasis on risk assessment, the hierarchy of controls, ethics, and practical risk-management strategies.

RAMP asks researchers to think rather than simply memorize a list of rules:

  • What are the hazards?
  • What could happen?
  • How likely and how severe could the consequences be?
  • What can we change before starting?
  • What will we do if things do not go as planned?

Those are scientific questions as much as safety questions. But there is another question worth asking:

  • How do we recognize people when they contribute to making the work safer?

That brings me back to the rats.

 

Giving the “Whole Rat”

During our seminars, participants kept asking if they could buy or have the plastic rats.

They were an absolute hit.

One summer day, a lightbulb went off. Instead of lamenting that people “don't give a rat's rear for safety,” why not turn the phrase around?

Why not give them the whole rat?

I printed a small label and tied it to the rat's tail. It read:

Lab Safety Rat Lab RatWe don't give a rat's rear for safety. We give the whole rat. Congratulations! You've just been ratted on for working safely. Now it's your turn to rat on someone else.

The idea was simple.

Safety programs can sometimes become very good at noticing problems—an improperly worn pair of goggles, an unlabeled container, a missed procedure, or another deviation—without being equally good at noticing the people who are helping make the work better. The lab safety rat flipped that around.

If you saw someone contributing to safer work, you recognized them.

 

What Deserves the Rat Today?

What we recognize as contributing to safer science has evolved.

It certainly might be someone using PPE correctly or taking the time to perform a hazard assessment.

But it might also be:

  • The researcher who asks an important question before an experiment begins.
  • The colleague who notices that conditions have changed and says, “Should we stop and reconsider this?”
  • The person who reports a near miss so everyone can learn from it.
  • The student who identifies a hazard nobody else noticed.
  • The laboratory worker who points out that a procedure is difficult to perform as written.
  • The colleague who helps someone else think through a risk rather than simply telling them what rule to follow.
  • The person who proposes a change that makes the safer way of doing the work easier for everyone.

Those are all contributions worth noticing. And reinforcing.

 

Recognize Learning, Not Just Perfection

There is another person who might deserve the rat:

The person willing to say, “I made a mistake, and here's what happened.”

Laboratories learn when people can talk about unexpected conditions, mistakes, near misses, difficulties, and the adaptations they make while getting work done.

That principle is not new, but its importance is increasingly recognized. The National Academies has emphasized open communication, continuous learning, nonpunitive reporting of incidents and near misses, and empowering researchers to raise concerns without fear of repercussions.

Laboratory Safety Teams provide one practical example. ACS continues to support student-led LSTs across North America. These groups promote peer-to-peer communication, education, hazard identification, and problem-solving, with support from faculty, department leaders, and safety professionals.

The goal should not be pretending that people perform perfectly.

The goal should be creating workplaces in which people can help one another identify what is working, what is difficult, what has changed, and what can be made better.

 

From Recognition to Improvement

Recognition alone, of course, does not make work safe. When someone raises a concern, identifies a hazard, reports a near miss, or tells us that a task is difficult to perform safely, we have to do something with that information. Sometimes the answer is additional knowledge or coaching. Sometimes it is changing a procedure. Sometimes it is providing better equipment. Sometimes it is improving training. Sometimes it is addressing workload, supervision, available resources, or another condition surrounding the work.

And whenever possible, risk reduction should follow the hierarchy of controls—eliminating or controlling hazards rather than relying primarily on people to remember to protect themselves. That is where recognition becomes more than a reward. It becomes a way of learning about the work.

Notice what people contribute. Learn from what they tell us. Improve the way the work gets done.

 

The Power of Shared Ownership

The Lab Safety Rat began as a joke in a blue van. But the idea behind it has lasted. People closest to the work see things others do not. They notice changing conditions. They discover where procedures work and where they do not. They experience the practical challenges of experiments, equipment, schedules, facilities, and competing demands. And they often see opportunities for improvement long before an incident occurs. That is why safer science cannot belong exclusively to an EHS office, a Chemical Hygiene Officer, a principal investigator, a teacher, or an administrator. Nor should safety exist as something separate from the organization's real work. Everyone involved in the work has something to contribute. Leadership's responsibility is to create the conditions in which those contributions can be heard and acted upon.

 

Start “Ratting” on Your Colleagues

So, yes—consider getting yourself a plastic rat. But don't just look for someone wearing their goggles. Look for the person who asks the question nobody else thought to ask. Recognize the person who stops when something doesn't look right. Thank the person who shares a mistake or near miss. Notice the colleague who helps someone else assess a risk. Celebrate the person who identifies a better way to do the work. Give them the whole rat. Then ask them to pass it on. Because safer science isn't something separate from doing good science. It's part of how good science gets done.

If you try this in your laboratory, classroom, campus, or research facility, let us know. We would love to hear who gets the rat—and, more importantly, what they did to earn it.

 

References

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