Posted 07.28.2011 at 10:07 am
19 Comments
Wear Your Goggles
H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images
Consider the autoclave, which scientists use to sterilize tools and which issues scalding steam to do so. Or consider the heat gun, which is used to dry glassware and to warm distillation devices. It can also ignite anything flammable that gets too close. Glass containers in a vacuum can implode, spraying shards everywhere. Centrifuge rotors can fail, causing explosions that throw shock waves throughout a lab filled with chemicals. Steel vessels built to contain liquids and gases at hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch can rupture, hurling metal at lab workers. Yet none of these instruments is nearly as dangerous as the only thing found in every single laboratory on earth: us.
When lab accidents result in death or serious injury, human error is usually to blame. In 1997, Elizabeth Griffin, a 22-year-old primate researcher at Emory University, wasn’t wearing goggles when a rhesus monkey flung feces into her eyes. She died of complications from herpes B six weeks later. In 1996, chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn inadvertently dribbled some dimethylmercury onto her gloved hand during a routine transfer in a Dartmouth College lab. It seeped through her glove and, 10 months later, she died of mercury poisoning. And in 2009, Sheharbano Sangji, a 23-year-old lab assistant at the University of California at Los Angeles, wasn’t wearing the required flame-resistant lab coat and died from burns after a chemical fire ignited her sweater.
All these accidents, you may have noticed, occurred at schools. James Kaufman, president of the nonprofit Laboratory Safety Institute, says that the rate of lab accidents at schools and colleges is up to 100 times that in the chemical industry. Although educational labs are far more dangerous, the exact number of accidents is impossible to know. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics only records accidents in professional labs. While Dow, DuPont and other chemical manufacturers enforce rigorous safety programs, the safety policies at universities are often communicated to lab workers through anecdotes and unsystematic verbal warnings. And school labs are full of inexperienced workers: students. After Michele Dufault asphyxiated in a Yale University machine shop the night of April 12, speculation centered on the safety precautions taken by the undergrad. Working alone, she was strangled when her hair caught in a lathe.
The routine tasks that killed Griffin, Wetterhahn, Sangji and Dufault are actually statistically more dangerous than the supercolliders or the biosafety-level-4 hazards that cannot be handled without moonsuits. Part of the reason is that fewer people are exposed. Just as important, the more dangerous the equipment at a lab is, the more exhaustive the safety program. At the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, researchers wear sealed biohazard suits and take decontamination showers lasting seven minutes. Automated air systems ensure that potentially contaminated air cannot escape the rooms that house the Ebola and Marburg viruses. Reminders of the extreme danger are ever present, so scientists never get too comfortable. Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, says that “the most dangerous thing is human error, and the highest containment labs are much less likely to have it."
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so... its *me* that is the most dangerous piece of equipment in my lab, and not my high voltage power supplies? or perhaps it is the radioactive stuff that if handled incorrectly *can* kill? Oh, or maybe high wattage lasers? and simple things, like scissors? Or even boring ways, like dieing under an avalanche of papers you've been meaning to read for the past 5 years?
Oh, so many ways to die in a lab.
Anyone got other fun (but realistic) ones?
@eregorn8:
none of the stuff you listed would be dangerous, though, without a human, such as you, or me, to mess things up and unleash the potential danger ourselves.
why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
In a chemical Lab, fluoric acid.
@my name here
That's a bit of a "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around" argument. Obviously a person has to be there for it to be a dangerous accident.
But that doesn't I don't have to worry about mercury poisoning, or the high pressure lines failing right by my head. Or even the refractories in my kiln failing and crushing me in an avalanche of toasty toasty death. Equally fun as hot refractories is just simple playing with liquid nitrogen, I know its bad, but its just so darn fun...
I feel terrible for the family of Elizabeth, probably the worst obituary ever.
"Elizabeth Griffen 22 dies from a fatal monkey poo fight. Her final words were "if only I had charmin ultra soft on hand" The monkey is due on trial at the end of the month."
all those women....a lab..is not a kitchen.
How about H2SO4? It reacts violently with water and causes sever burns. It is viscous in glacial form and releases and extreme amount of heat. Imagine that, rinsing off an oil that gets hotter with water and it reacts with any and all organic compounds in a negative way. It also smells like eggs.
A note to matt, I believe you are referring to "Fluorine Martyrs." google it.
There is also the ever present danger of ether. It's lighter than air and fills a room within minutes. It can flash detonate in poorly ventilated areas.
I agree with the article that *we* are the most dangerous things in a lab. With out proper safety protocol even a simple water distiller can be dangerous.
I'd have to agree. Humans are by far the most dangerous. And out of those, freshman in the lab take the cake. So so so many scary stories. I can't believe no one got killed.
i know exactly what this means! i almost lit my barn on fire twice when i was dinking around with alcohol wax and tin cans.
if that's how i am at home then i shall have to endeavor to not be a danger in a lab.
to mars or bust!
As a Freshman or Sophomore in a boarding high-school, we had a 1/2 hour work period after classes spent cleaning the building. I took this opportunity to carefully unlock a window to the laboratory chemical storage room; it was actually a whole room!
Later that evening, I sneaked into the room and went straight for the brick of sodium. it was approximately 1-2" square by about 4-5" long suspended inside a metal container filled with oil.
In the darkness, I actually unscrewed the lid, and pulled out the brick of sodium and looked at it for awhile; I can still see it glistening ominously in the darkness; fortunately, I am still alive- apparently, I knew well enough to put it away and go back to bed.
Of course, this hardly compares with my boiling a solution of nitric acid and glycerin when i worked at the Water Department... then again, never did learn how that reaction occurs so maybe not, maybe it needs a catalyst or some pressure.
Anyway, even though I'm still here, I'd say an immature, uncontrollably curious mind, is the most dangerous piece of equipment in the laboratory.
"Everything not forbidden is mandatory." Murray Gell-Mann
This is a non-argument. Danger to humans does not exist without humans. Danger can not be assessed based on what machines are able to do without human input because they pose no threat without said input. The person is always the most dangerous element in any situation not referencing natural phenomena.
Perhaps carelessness is more dangerous than curiosity.
I disagree.
Just because people need to be there to be affected, or to slip up, that does not make them the most dangerous thing in the lab.
If two people bump into each other, minor injuries may occur, at worst. On the other hand, if a person and concentrated acid bump into each other, the person will be severely injured because acid is inherently more dangerous.
To me at least, the danger lies in the substance being mishandled. The people in this instance are simply allowing that inherent danger to manifest, but are not, themselves, more dangerous.
That second example shows how dangerous a substance can be, in that it was lethal, even to a person who had taken the proper protective equipment precautions.
the article is correct, human error is #1; substances are not equiptment so spilling on oneself, ect. does not count; if a robot replaced humans and robot error caused an accident, then the robot would be to blame; we are just a biological robot, which qualifies us as equiptment, the author is just reducing accidents down to the most commom denominator (?), us
correction to above comment...the substance is not to blame when spilling it on one's self
Does anyone watch TV? Lots of media shows peoples faces clearly in a TV drama without goggles and other necessary safety gear. They do this to help display the DRAMA. Yes they know its wrong, but its more about the drama of the story and seeing the expression of the actors than being correct. I am sure this picture is just from an archive tv drama and not meant to illustrate true science lab safety.
When I was at university a classmate was diluting some hydrochloric acid and must have breathed some of the fumes. Not in itself all that dangerous. But then he helped someone clean up some spilled ammonia.
The ammonia and HCL fumes combined in his lungs, producing ammonuim chloride, which is solid. He was in intensive care for six weeks.
Human error, indeed. That's because most of the messy things we use is man-made so it's bound to get cranky at one point.
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it might sound politcally incorrect but there is another common denominator among your list of accidents - it's all women. i hope this does not reflect real statitics.