Halloween Science Demonstration Goes Wrong, Burns Teacher
A high school science teacher in Duluth, Georgia, wanted to show her class an attention-getting demonstration for Halloween involving gas vapor, a pumpkin and a flame. But things did not go as intended. Students watched as flames surrounded their teacher's face,...
The Case for Carrots: Why You Should Reward Good Safety Performance
For many years, I have listened to wiser folks say that you should not give rewards for good safety performance. Usually, they have one or both of two reasons. The first reason is that you should not reward people for doing what they are supposed to do. Second,...
Should Your Chemical Hygiene Plan Lose Weight?
As the years went by, what started as a skinny 25-40 page document has gradually bloated to over 150 pages before anyone realized it. Let's face it: your chemical hygiene plan (CHP) is overweight. And the problem isn't just cosmetic. When many people see a policy...
Chemical Companies Operating Under the Radar
Photo: Associated Press On March 15, an explosion at a Tri-Chem Industries chemical plant in Cresson, Texas left one person dead and two injured. Days later, hazardous chemicals were still burning. What chemicals exactly have burned into the air since the explosion?...
How Do You Convince People to Care?
Apparently, not dying isn't enough to convince people to care about their own safety. Believe me, it's not. For 40 years, I've been trying. Still, in every country, in every lab I visit, I find health and safety personnel struggling with the same question: How do you...
Marie Curie: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Marie Curie is famous for her ground-breaking work on radioactivity, which is also what killed her. Curie died of aplastic anemia, believed to be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation. Usually, we write it off as "back then, nobody understood the dangers of...
Lab Safety Poster – How To Increase Safety Awareness at Your Lab Instantly
Even with a well-trained staff, a careless moment in a laboratory could lead to an accident. The challenge confronting many teachers, lab managers and chemical hygiene officers is how to raise the level of safety awareness among everyone in the lab at all times. One...
Lab Safety Quiz – Electric
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Make America’s Classrooms and Workplaces Safe Again
It happened again. A dozen kids sat on the floor in a Texas church school recently, watching a teacher show them a "fun" science experiment. The teacher took some boric acid, put it in a beaker, then poured in methanol from a jug. A swirling rainbow-like flame jumped...
National Academic Research Safety Award – Summer 2014
The Laboratory Safety Institute has created a national safety award for the Academic Principal Investigator whose research group has the best lab safety program. We are asking Environmental Health and Safety departments at universities to nominate the PI at their...