How can we improve lab safety in academia?

Slate : Five months ago, Sheri Sangji, a young technician in a biochemistry laboratory at the University of California-Los Angeles began to transfer a tablespoon of t-butyl lithium from one container to another. T-butyl lithium is pyrophoric, meaning it ignites on contact with air, but Sheri Sangji wasn’t wearing a protective lab coat--instead, she had on a flammable synthetic sweatshirt. Somehow the stuff spilled onto her clothing, and she was engulfed in flames. Sangji died from her burns 18 days later.

According to a recently completed government investigation, the fire could have been foreseen. UCLA’s own safety officials had already faulted the lab on the latter issue back in October, but the problem went uncorrected.

James Kaufman, president of the Laboratory Safety Institute in Natick, Mass ., estimates that accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones.

The presence of flagrant safety violations at a major research university is no surprise, says Slate’s Beryl Lieff Benderly .

Since what counts in academia is publishing papers and winning grants, any change will have to start with the people who control the research money, says Benderly. Federal funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation should treat the welfare of the students, postdocs, and technicians who do the labor of American science with the same attention they afford experimental subjects and laboratory animals.

Related Physics Today article
After Serious Accident, SLAC Experiments Remain Shut Down and DOE Report Faults Lab’s Safety Oversight (February 2005)