Chemical Lab Safety Problems Spawn New Laws, Practices

In July 1973, while driving home from his job as a chemist at Dow Chemical Co.'s Wayland, Mass., research facility, James Kaufman heard on the radio that there had been a serious explosion at nearby Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Kaufman, who had been working at Dow for only a few weeks, had recently completed postdoctoral work at Worcester Polytechnic, and had earned his Ph.D. there a few years before. Upon hearing the news of the accident, he bypassed his house, driving straight to the Worcester Polytech lab instead. "I got there two hours after the explosion," Kaufman remembers. "The light fixtures had been blown off the ceiling, the windows had been blown out of the room. There had been a lab bench with a soapstone top on it, with a laminated plywood cabinet underneath, and it looked as if someone had taken a hot knife through butter--it was sheared right in half. A grad student I knew blew off portions of his hands, and he was lucky he wasn't killed." Kaufman, now a professor of chemistry and director of the Laboratory Safety Workshop at Curry College in Milton, Mass., says that while he's not sure exactly how the explosion happened, he believes that safety precautions that were routine at Dow Chemical had not been followed at the school. "[The graduate student] was synthesizing a large quantity of a compound that was potentially explosive," he says. "He was doing it out on a bench, with no shielding, with too much material." The incident, says Kaufman, "really made me want to share a lot of what I had learned at Dow about safety with academic institutions." Lessons From Industry Kaufman, who has directed the Lab Safety Workshop for the last 10 years, says that academia has a lot to learn about safety. "My data suggests that schools and colleges have an accident rate 10 to 100 times greater than the chemical industry average," he says. Recently, however, Kaufman says that academia's interest in safety has risen sharply. Much of this interest is due to the new "laboratory standard," a regulation (29 CFR 1910.1450) enacted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last year. The standard went into effect May 1, 1990. Unlike previous OSHA regulations, the standard was designed to address the unique working conditions of an experimental lab. According to OSHA estimates, it could affect 934,000 employees in 34,214 laboratories across the United States. Because of the wide range of toxic and otherwise dangerous materials used in chemical labs, the chemical industry and academic chemistry curriculum are particularly affected by the legislation. The new standard, says Kaufman, "upgrades the attention and care everybody pays to lab safety issues." The standard is performance-based, meaning that while specific results are spelled out, the manner in which they are achieved is up to the lab or institution. Its requirements include careful record keeping, providing employees with free medical examinations under certain conditions, and training employees to work safely in the laboratory. One of the most important parts of the standard is the chemical hygiene plan (CHP), the means by which many of the other requirements are to be fulfilled. The CHP is a program, written by a "chemical hygiene officer" designated by the institution, that is specific to the lab or institution. It delineates the practices, procedures, and equipment to be used to protect employees from laboratory hazards. All labs or institutions under OSHA jurisdiction were to have a CHP in place by Jan. 31, 1991. "The big thing about a chemical hygiene plan is that, hopefully, it will formalize safety training," says George Wahl, a coauthor of Developing a Chemical Hygiene Plan (with Jay A. Young and Warren K. Kingsley, Washington, D.C., American Chemical Society, 1990). Wahl is director of organic chemistry and chairman of the university hazardous materials committee at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. While most schools have or are developing institution-wide plans, at North Carolina State, says Wahl, "we insist that each PI [principal investigator] has his or her own safety plan," based on guidelines developed by the university. James Knopp, an associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State, just submitted his safety plan to the university. He says that writing the plan was useful: "It made me acutely aware of what the regulations are." However, he says, "I don't think that doing it will make [the lab] any more safe than it was already." It took Knopp about 40 hours to write the 60-page document, and although the university had models for researchers to follow, "it was still a frustrating exercise." In spite of Knopp's reservations about the safety plan, he does believe it will provide his lab with a valuable training tool. "It's nice to have something you can give to a new person, [explaining] what to do if you have a spill, how to get out of the building in case of emergency, where the fire extinguishers are, where the first aid kits are." He does feel somewhat overburdened by the new policy, however. "I feel like these rules are set up for the lowest common denominator," he says. "The people in a research or teaching lab are a little more aware of things, and are capable of handling a higher level of risk, for convenience, and still be safe." In spite of the added burden on researchers, Wahl is confident that the policy will make the labs safer workplaces. "We get a lot more gripes," he says, "but we also get the assurance that people do understand the plan and know how to use it." Wahl believes that implementing a CHP will be especially valuable for academic institutions. "The problem in academic labs is that, unlike a company, there is no easy chain of command," he says. "Faculty members are essentially entrepreneurs, and [safety often] falls through the cracks. A CHP makes people take responsibility for safety and training." However, Wahl worries that enforcement of the new lab standard may be sporadic. "With the [federal] budget in its current state," he says, "it's anybody's guess when someone from OSHA comes around." Locked In A Loop Another reason for academia's poorer safety record, says Kaufman, is that "we're locked into a loop. The people went to school never learning that [safety] was important. They graduated and went directly into teaching, carrying on the practices they did--or didn't--learn in their undergraduate institutions." With his Lab Safety Workshop, Kaufman is trying to break this cycle by offering lab safety books, videos, workshops, and other resources to instructors and professors. Kaufman says that industry has a better record than academia because it places a higher priority on safety. "Productivity can't come at the expense of safety," he says. "The places that are serious about safety have very clear operating priorities." Kaufman translates these priorities into instructions for his students: "One, work safely; two, clean up; and three, get results. When you put life in that perspective you'll put a whole lot more emphasis on safety than if you have someone beating you over the head for results." Chuck Tatum, director of corporate research at Rohm & Haas Co., the Philadelphia-based specialty chemical firm, concurs. "Safety, for us, like most other chemical companies, is a very integral part of performance and performance evaluations," he says. "Working safely is as important to us as running an experiment accurately and carefully." OSHA's new lab standard will not significantly affect operations at Rohm & Haas, according to Gary Kuether, site manager at the company's Spring House, Pa., research facility. "Having read the lab standard very carefully," he says, "we have concluded that if our employees are following all the safety procedures we have in place, we are in full compliance." According to Kaufman, data collected at Dow indicate that 50 percent to 60 percent of disabling injuries happen within the first two years on the job or on a new assignment. Kuether, who is responsible for safety for Rohm & Haas' research division, agrees. "There's no question that new people have a disproportionate share of injuries," he says. Whether employees come from academia, another company, or even a different part of Rohm & Haas, Kuether emphasizes that "everybody needs training when they come." In addition to the initial training employees receive, every research department at Rohm & Haas spends about two hours each month in meetings reviewing or learning about new safety ideas. Through the company's management audit system, managers spend an hour every two weeks in the lab talking to employees, on an individual basis, about the various aspects of safety associated with their jobs. The subject matter discussed at these sessions is concrete and specific, says Kuether, based on "what that employee is doing at that time." For example, a manager meeting with a bench chemist would discuss his or her physical activities at the bench, the protective equipment being used and how it was chosen, the chemist's knowledge of the hazards involved, and applicable government and company regulations. Each audit is written up, but employee names are not used. "No punitive actions are allowed to come out of this system," he says. "It lets employees know that managers care about their safety." An important safety precaution new employees learn at Rohm & Haas is hazard analysis, the step-by-step determination of the dangers associated with each process and each chemical used by the worker. "We expect that once an employee has been here for a while, he'll do a mini-hazard analysis for [every new process], no matter how slight the change," says Kuether. "It may only take five minutes, but we expect they'll think about it and write it down in their research notebook." At the Wilmington, Del.-based Du Pont Merck Pharmaceutical Co., formerly a major portion of the medical products division of E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. Inc., the new lab standard will not substantially alter lab practices. (Du Pont Merck was incorporated Jan. 1, 1991, as a joint venture between Du Pont and Merck & Co. Inc. of Rahway, N.J.) According to Bob Leonzio, safety training coordinator, the standard "institutionalized a lot of our existing safety programs." In addition, the company has restructured the safety training program to involve technical supervisors to a greater extent, putting training at "a grass-roots level, where incidents occur," says Evans Shearon, Du Pont Merck's manager of safety and occupational health. Shearon and Leonzio agree that universities need to make safety a higher priority. In fact, says Shearon, "any student would be well served early in his academic career by good, basic industrial hygiene and safety instruction." Detailed training in the proper use of fume hoods and personal protection equipment such as shields, gloves, and goggles, Shearon maintains, "will prevent the vast majority of incidents in the workplace"--incidents such as hand lacerations from broken glass and injuries from splashes of lab chemicals such as solvents or caustic materials. Leonzio would like to see this training initiated even earlier. Safety education, he says, "should begin in the initial stages of science training, in junior high and high school. It should be included in their regular research and science activities." While college-level courses in lab safety exist, says Kaufman, they are few and far between. One of the primary activities of Kaufman's lab safety workshop at Curry College is to conduct a summer institute for college teachers wishing to teach such courses. The institute takes 50 instructors each summer, with most expenses paid. Many college and secondary school teachers have been making their labs safer by performing safer experiments. For example, Kaufman says, rather than using the toxic chemical paradichlorobenzene (mothballs) to demonstrate the melting of a solid, teachers can use stearic acid, a common food additive. Bill Kirkendall, a chemistry teacher and chairman of the science department at Salisbury High School in Allentown, Pa., has made lab safety a top priority at his school. Over the last three years, he says, the high school of about 385 students has been completely renovated. "This was my opportunity to design the lab and include the safety features I wanted to include," he says. These features include four ventilation hoods; most high schools have just one. The lab also has emergency equipment, such as eyewashes, safety showers, and spill cleanup materials. A Good Attitude Kirkendall says that the teacher's attitude is one of the most important elements of a lab safety program. Instructors, he says, have to set an example: "If it's not important for them to wear [a lab coat or goggles], why should the students?" Kirkendall also suggests that schools have in-service programs periodically to update science instructors and others who handle chemicals on safety procedures. Salisbury High School is part of a nationwide trend toward upgrading lab safety equipment. According to Richard Drew, marketing manager of safety products at VWR Scientific, a Philadelphia-based laboratory supply company, the safety market has been growing rapidly for the last few years, probably more than 20 percent annually. In the last few months, he says, "sales are up 50 percent in hood sales alone." In addition, he says, spill control equipment sales increased by about 30 percent in 1990. Drew attributes much of these increases to OSHA's lab standard. While safety goggles in four fashion colors, promoted in the VWR catalog as "a must for a safer, more stylish workplace," may be considered frivolous by some, features such as these can be important to getting people to actually use safety devices. "People are more likely to use something they feel good about putting on," says Drew. He adds that many new safety products are geared toward comfort as well, such as foam-lined goggles, which will encourage people to keep their goggles on for long periods when safety demands it. J.T. Baker Inc., a chemical supplier based in Phillipsburg, N.J., has also experienced substantial growth in the safety area, says Mike Stehlin, marketing manager of safety products and training services. The company offers several solvents and acids in glass bottles coated with plastic, reducing the chance of spills if the bottle is dropped. The plastic coating adds a few dollars to the cost of a bottle of chemicals, says Stehlin, but sales have been increasing, along with other safety products, as people realize that "safety is a cost of doing business." J.T. Baker also markets Reagette packages of chemicals, available in portions as small as 125 grams or milliliters. Before the company introduced the Reagette line of chemicals three years ago, one could purchase no less than 500 ml of many materials, says Stehlin. But safety and hazardous waste disposal concerns are prompting researchers to buy smaller amounts of chemicals. Although good lab safety equipment is vital to a safe workplace, it is obvious that any piece of equipment is only as safe as the person operating it. "The most important things are just housekeeping," North Carolina State's Wahl points out. While "the most important pieces of real estate in a chemical lab are the fume hoods," he says, if they are not used properly--if the sashes are up or if they are cluttered with equipment--their value may be negligible. Rohm & Haas' Kuether agrees that safety must be second nature. "More than anything " he says, "safety is an attitude."

Chemical Lab Safety Problems Spawn New Laws, Practices

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