“The funeral of William Eastman Spandow . . . will be held in the Chapel at 11 o'clock this morning.” This was the introduction of the obituary given by the Columbia Spectator in 1922 on the unusual death of a 24-year-old chemist. The obituary describes a shocking...

Labs vary from place to place and even within the same academic institution or industry. A high school science lab has different requirements from a commercial testing lab. This variety can make it difficult to come up with a standardized set of rules. While there is...

You have some great lab safety posters laminated and mounted strategically around the lab. Great! Problem is, after a few months, people get used to seeing them and don't notice them anymore. Your shiny new posters might as well be wallpaper. Here's an idea you may...

In 1998, a small group of field techs were collecting groundwater samples in the wilderness area near the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado when they were surprised by a pickup truck tearing through the field toward them, leaving behind a cloud of...

"What potentially fatal things did you do when you first learned chemistry?" This question was recently posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo in the wake of the lab accident that killed three researchers at Jiaotong University in Beijing on December 26. The...

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,...

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,...

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...

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?...

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...