Resources — money, personnel, raw materials, etc. — are finite, and it is vital we value and protect them. Perhaps our most precious resource is the youth who are poised to pursue careers in chemical engineering, where they will take up the mantle of workplace and process safety. The hope is that they will adopt the standard industry goal: to send employees home in the same condition as they arrived at work.
Often a student’s first exposure to safe workplace and chemical-handling practices occurs in the school laboratory. Over the past decade, several significant incidents have occurred in high school and university labs, typically involving flammable liquids (e.g., methanol), combustion, open flames, or ignition sources. After a lab fire injured five students and a teacher at a Virginia high school on Oct. 30, 2015, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) announced that it would renew efforts to prevent lab accidents related to the use of flammable chemicals in classroom demonstrations.
A quick Internet search for laboratory accidents in schools reveals that this was not an isolated event. Most of the reported incidents involve demonstrations in which flames flash back from the ignition source to the flammable material in a bulk container, sometimes injuring students or teachers nearby.
The CSB Safety...
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