Toward Improved Safety Culture in Academic and Industrial Chemical Laboratories: An Assessment and Recommendation of Best Practices

Abstract

Numerous injuries and fatalities in chemical laboratories in the United States over the past few decades have suggested the need to take measures that go beyond mere compliance and toward promoting safer practices. A collaboration between the Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources and Purdue Process Safety and Assurance Center assessed the current safety culture in chemical laboratories at their academic and industrial partners by conducting safety surveys. Key areas of improvement were identified from the responses to the safety surveys, which if addressed can mitigate the severity of safety incidents or prevent them from occurring. The findings indicate that a majority of the respondents from academia conduct comprehensive lab safety trainings (∼80%), have standard operating procedures for potentially hazardous activities (∼90%), regularly discuss safety-related issues during lab group meetings (∼85%), or are involved in routine safety inspections (∼85%). However, fewer of the academic respondents were aware of a database for safety incidents in their departments (∼50%) or utilized a standard safety review process for new experimental setups or modifications to existing setups (∼70%). The results from industry respondents suggest that improvements to commonly used hazard evaluation tools and increased accessibility to comprehensive databases can increase the effectiveness of hazard evaluation processes. Additionally, recommended best practices and guidelines are provided for researchers within the scientific community to develop key safety documentation that will both strengthen the safety culture and improve safety performance in their laboratories. Taken together, this safety initiative highlights the much-needed attention and effort that are beneficial to promote improved safety culture within academic and industrial chemical laboratories.

Promoting a Safe Laboratory Environment Using the Reactive Hazard Evaluation and Analysis Compilation Tool

“…To address this gap, the National Science Foundation (NSF) encouraged and funded a joint effort between two research centers, Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources (CISTAR) and Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center (P2SAC), to investigate ways to improve safety practices in research laboratories and develop a tool that will assist with the hazard analysis process. An independent survey of safety practices, conducted with the help of industrial and academic laboratories involved with CISTAR and P2SAC, suggested that the continued occurrence of incidents is potentially linked to the lack of adequate documentation of best practices and the scarcity of tools that can help research laboratories quickly analyze and address safety risks . Equally important, from the Texas Tech laboratory explosion case study, the CSB cited the researchers’ ineffective assessment of the physical hazards and limited analysis of the issues arising during scale-up that contributed to the incident. , In so doing, the researchers’ assumptions concerning the relative safety of the small-scale reaction batch did not directly translate to the larger-scale setup.…”

“…The property databases mentioned earlier can be used to understand the inherent hazards associated with the type of reaction system being studied. Despite access to these tools, our independent industrial survey noted certain challenges when using these tools to assess the risks involved in a specific experimental system . Some of these challenges include the inconvenience of accessing multiple tools and databases during hazard evaluation, the lack of a streamlined procedure for hazard evaluation, and the limited functionalities in major tools for chemical compatibility checks or PPE (personal protective equipment) guidance.…”

Safety and Perceptions of Risk in the Handling of Laboratory Chemicals in a Biological Research Community

“…Most published studies of chemical safety focus on hazards or incidents with individual chemicals or provide understanding of safety management practices in academic or industrial chemistry laboratories , but offer more limited insights into the importance of the physical environment, organizational power, and culture , in determining human behavior and chemical safety as determined in this study. The power imbalance between “work as imagined” and “work as done” bedevils compliance-based approaches to safety .…”

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Teachers and Laboratory Technicians toward Chemistry Laboratory Safety in Secondary Schools

“…According to this survey, the KAP of teachers and laboratory technicians were below the standard level of science practitioners. Therefore, the authors have recommended the following intervention strategies to improve the KAP of teachers and laboratory technicians and promote a stronger lab safety culture formulated from this study as well as other past studies in different countries. ,− Teaching laboratory safety as part of a chemistry curriculum in secondary and preparatory schools is critical to preparing students for their future careers with a solid safety mindset. Teachers and laboratory practitioners play an essential role in modeling safety to their students.…”