When researchers strive to do the right thing, rather than just the required thing, a safety culture which embraces personal and communal responsibility emerges. In our experience, building a culture based on responsibility within a research group can complement and enhance institutional safety training.

Electrosurgery and procedures that utilize formalin expose healthcare workers to formaldehyde. Incorporating catalytic materials into air-purifying devices has the potential to reduce formaldehyde levels in nosocomial settings. A catalytic transition metal oxide was interfaced with a portable negative pressure (PNP) unit in a simulated operating room (OR) polluted with formaldehyde by exposure to formalin and by applying electrosurgical cuts to porcine muscle. The formaldehyde levels decayed biexponentially when the PNP unit was equipped with a catalyst. When the PNP unit was off, the time-weighted average concentration of formaldehyde detected in the perimeter of the OR during simulated electrosurgery was 0.45 (0.21) ppm. When the PNP unit was on, the time-weighted average concentration reduced to 0.15 (0.08) ppm. The device has the potential to considerably reduce formaldehyde levels in OR environments.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cornell University depopulated its main campus and instructed laboratories to temporarily cease lab work. This presented the opportunity to shut off fume hoods to save energy. What was anticipated to be highly successful showed the need for improvements in methods. This paper offers steps for fume hood hibernation and system design elements that will allow for efficient shutdown that will make the hood hibernation program more effective.

The ambiguity of certain diseases and the potential toxicity of many medications have sparked demand for the incorporation and enhancement of drug delivery systems (DDSs). Nanomedicine has received renewed attention in modern medical advancements with therapeutic uses. Therefore, the development of nanomedicines for enhanced bioaccessibility, long drug administration, and dose reduction has advanced as a unique concept. Nanocapsules, nanoemulsions, drug nanocrystals, micelles, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), and polymeric nanoparticles (poly-NPs) are among the most effective nanomedicine techniques. Poly-NPs have emerged as a potential method to enhance drug pharmacokinetics. Pharmaceutical potency can be increased by using nanocarriers and medication formulations. The potential of poly-NPs to alter contemporary medicine has attracted significant interest; polymer adaptability makes them suitable for site-specific drug delivery requirements. However, little is known about their safety in long-term studies using high-pitched doses. These cells exhibit some extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS) because of the reactivity and size reduction of the polymers chosen by using living cells other than the target. With an increased understanding of polymers and their properties, it is equally important to emphasize the safety and toxicity of DDSs. Some of the toxic effects of polymeric nanodrugs include an increase in the cytotoxicity of the cell, reduction in the feasibility of the cell, increase in the rate of programmed cell death (apoptosis), precursors for tumor formation, DNA destruction, gene toxicity, rupture of the cell membrane, and lipid peroxidation reactions. In this article, we discuss the toxicity of nanoparticles (NPs) used in DDSs, including polylactide-co-glycolide, polylactic acid, polycaprolactone, and poly(alkyl cyanoacrylates), used in DDSs.

In collaboration with C&EN

“When people at a party ask me what I ‘do,’ I usually respond that I work for such-and-such organization, or that I work in such-and-such industry. If pressed I might disclose that I work in process safety, but rarely will I divulge that I am a safety advisor. I fear that ...[this]... will lead others to evaluate me in a certain way, and [...] not a particularly favorable one. ‘Petty,’ ‘bureaucratic,’ and ‘fun police’ are just some of the terms ascribed to those working in safety in Australia.” (1) Katrina Gray’s words as quoted struck me. I wondered if this negative perception were solely an Australian phenomenon? A discussion last year among the Board members of ACS Chemical Health & Safety, who represent a group of people working in safety from around the world in universities, laboratory safety, process safety, and related fields, suggested not. Further evidence comes from the United Kingdom. In 2013, Rob Strange, the outgoing chief executive of the UK’s professional institution for the health and safety profession (IOSH), argued the reputation of the profession had worsened over the last 12 years, but said “this doesn’t mean our members are not doing a good job.” (2) The bad press for health and safety in the UK, especially from one newspaper, prompted the national health and safety regulator, Health and Safety Executive (HSE), to initiate a myth debunking campaign to investigate decisions and rules made in the name of health and safety that were wrong. (3) Identifying the reasons for the bad press is not easy. However, some common themes reappear. These include disproportionate actions recommended for trivial risks such as graduates being banned from throwing their mortarboard hats in the air at a graduation ceremony. It was prohibited for reasons unconnected with health and safety, but health and safety was cited as the rationale. (4) However, before blaming the media for safety’s bad rap, are there genuine complaints about health and safety? The health and safety profession itself reports a variety of self-inflicted wounds to its reputation. One example is the decoupling between a system for managing safety and its actual impact on site, sometimes referred to as “work as imagined vs work as done.” (5) This provides fertile ground for cynicism for those who may not see a policy or system implemented in practice. Drew Rae, an academic at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, is more direct in pointing out that it is very hard to evaluate if management systems improve safety, and Dr. Rae questions the external certification of safety systems. (6) Rod Maule goes further, stating, “Too often people and organisations have a system that is accredited and ticks all the boxes but is disconnected from ... work done in real life.” (7) So, does safety have a bad rap? The evidence suggests it does. How has this situation come about? No doubt to some extent, as safety professionals we have brought this situation on ourselves by, at times, being too bureaucratic and focused on the paper manifestations of systems we intended to help from the front line. I wonder, too, if it is in part a function of success. I came into safety in the UK in the late 1970s just as a prescriptive approach to safety was being supplemented by a more goal setting approach. Industry was advancing too quickly to write specific regulations hence the change to a more risk focused approach. Furthermore, the focus on industrial safety stimulated by the industrial revolution and its highly visible steam boiler explosions and machinery accidents was widened to address sectors not previously covered, including education and health services. Both changes (goal setting and wider coverage of safety law) required many more people to get involved and work out what was reasonable to do. Not all had then, or have today, the experience and expertise to identify what was/is reasonable or proportionate to the risk at hand. No doubt there are other contributors and I doubt, as with most so-called safety incidents, that there is a single “root cause.” However, if this negative perspective of safety exists in the world, should we try to understand this issue more deeply and consider what can be done? This article references 7 other publications. This article has not yet been cited by other publications. This article references 7 other publications.

This article has not yet been cited by other publications.

3-HPMA: 3-hydroxypropyl mercapturic acid, acrolein exposure biomarker SPMA: S-phenyl mercapturic acid, benzene exposure biomarker CEMA: cyanoethyl mercapturic acid, acrylonitrile exposure biomarker HMPMA: 3-hydroxy-1-methylpropyl mercapturic acid, crotonaldehyde, methyl vinyl ketone, and methacrolein exposure biomarker Submit contributions to spotlights@safety.acs.org and be coauthored, or share ideas on social media with #SafetyHighlights This article has not yet been cited by other publications.

the Oxygen balance calculation the Rule of 6 calculation the presence or absence of Explosive functional groups the Onset temperature of decomposition the amount of material (the Scale) Submit contributions to highlights@safety.acs.org and be coauthored, or share ideas on social media with #SafetyHighlights This article has not yet been cited by other publications.

In this article, we establish a new vision of the importance of teaching laboratory safety, whereas some past views of safety education fade away. Here, we present an approach to teaching this important subject as an independent course by Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In this article, we introduce the advantages of safety education by MOOC, the construction and content of the MOOC “Safety in the Chemical Laboratory”, and the practices for safety education through MOOC resources in colleges and universities in mainland China.

The transportation of dangerous goods by road is the most accident-prone mode of transportation, even if accidents involving road transportation of dangerous goods are considered as a Low Probability and High Consequence event (LPHC event). However, several dangerous goods are transported by road networks, such as petroleum products and chemicals, which can generate major dangerous consequences such as spills, explosions, fires, or toxic clouds. In this context, this article presents a method to calculate and quickly quantify the sizes of impact zones characterized by high lethality and irreversible injuries to people in the case of a hazardous materials transport accident. This method is used as a module for the analysis of the consequences of different potential accident scenarios, for the Web-GIS platform proposed by LOSE+LAB, that implements appropriate ICT tools and systems for monitoring the flow of goods that would enable a continuous monitoring system at the cross-border level and transmit data and information to the territory actors involved in the management of dangerous goods according to the ADR standard. The proposed method provides the user with a visualization of the possible outcomes of an event by reproducing the impact area for different accident scenarios, which can provide quick maps of the hazard and represents a decision support system for territorial governance in terms of intervention and response protocols for emergency management in the cases of dangerous goods accidents.

They will studyworkrather than accidents. Safety researchers should almost exclusively be interested in the who, what, why, when, where, and how of work. They will describe work before prescribing interventions. There is a glut of novel methods and little evidence about whether they work. They will investigate and theorize before measuring. Theories that make testable predictions should be developed through qualitative investigations. They will directly observe practices. Inappropriate data is used too often, particularly self-reported data. They will appropriately incorporate advances in parent disciplines. Projects should contribute to and meet the standards of both safety research and the relevant parent discipline. They will prioritize real-world case studies. Case studies (defined as the empirical study of actual processes that would occur in the absence of a researcher) should be prioritized over “worked examples” (defined as a method applied by researchers to a tailored, simplified example). They will respect practitioners as partners. Researchers should forge knowledge-generating partnerships with practitioners that benefit both groups. Submit contributions to highlights@safety.acs.org and be coauthored, or share ideas on social media with #SafetyHighlights This article has not yet been cited by other publications.

In the past few years, a number of incidents related to fire and explosions in temporary chemical storage facilities have occurred that have resulted in large numbers of casualties. This includes explosions at a warehouse near Tianjin Port, China, in 2015 and that at a warehouse facility storing ammonium nitrate at Beirut port, Lebanon, in 2020. Very recently, a similar incident occurred in a container depot in Bangladesh. On June 4, 2022, a massive fire broke out at BM Inland Container Depot, a temporary storage facility in the town of Sitakunda, Bangladesh. The fire and subsequent explosions resulted in at least 48 fatalities, including 10 firefighters, and injured more than 200 people. The fire, which took 86 h to completely extinguish, has resulted in financial losses of more than US$152 million according to authorities. In this paper, an investigative consequence analysis of the accident is presented with the goals to identify the possible reasons that culminated in the catastrophe, quantify the magnitude of the explosion, and explore the key lessons learned. This work also sheds light on the existing local legislation and international guidelines relating to the storage of hazardous materials. Furthermore, human and social consequences of an accident similar in magnitude have been assessed for two other inland container depots. This work, thus, may be considered a scientific exercise aimed at creating awareness of the gravity of accidents in temporary storage facilities and a lesson learned to prevent such catastrophes in the future.

In collaboration with C&EN

Dangerous gas leakage may cause severe consequences in industrial fields. Hence, it is significant to develop a reliable and rapid method for gas leakage recognition. Infrared imaging technology has a privilege of visibility for some invisible objects. However, infrared radiation signals of the gases are extremely weak. Therefore, it is hard to identify the gas leakage by normal infrared imaging device with wide wavelength range in the condition of atmospheric dispersion. In this research, a series of enhancement methods to detect the gas leakage with conventional wide-wavelength thermal imaging device was proposed by introducing auxiliary excitation including background enhancement and external thermal pulse excitation to improve the infrared imaging for gas leaking in the atmosphere. CO2 gas leakage was tested with FLIR-DuoR infrared camera under different auxiliary excitation modes. The experiments showed that it was impossible to recognize the leaking gases by infrared imager without any auxiliary means even there had large temperature difference between the leaking gases and background. Proper backboard did make the gas leaking visible except the white board for gas leaking at room temperature. However, the auxiliary background board with different materials demonstrated varied performance for imaging enhancement. Moreover, the auxiliary excitation with light-thermal pulse excitation also enhanced the infrared imaging for gas leakage. Finally, a leakage recognition method with machine learning model was proposed based on infrared images obtained from the experiments. The result indicated that overall prediction accuracy was above 95%. Therefore, the gas leakage recognition method based on normal infrared imaging with auxiliary excitation means and machine learning model is a potentially good tool to detect and distinguish the gas leakage.

Laboratory safety education is an important part of basic chemistry laboratory teaching. The lack of chemistry learning motivation among freshmen affects the implementation of laboratory safety literacy. This work investigates the influence of chemistry learning motivation on the safety perception as reflected in the safety motivation, safety participation, and safety awareness and attitude among the freshmen at Tianjin University of Technology. The results show that there are significant differences among freshmen in gender, major, and area of origin. The results indicate the existence of a positive correlation between internal motivation and other factors of safety motivation, safety participation, and safety awareness and attitude. Finally, we concluded that the improvement of chemistry learning motivation contributes to the increase in safety perception in laboratories. Based on the data mentioned above, some improvement strategies are recommended for the subsequent safety education and management.

Plant & Food Research (PFR) is a biologically orientated multi-disciplinary research institute with the goal of improving the value of New Zealand’s horticultural products. Within PFR, the practice of chemistry is both widespread and the focus of specialist chemists. To improve safety in the handling of laboratory chemicals, we sought to understand the state of chemical practice and knowledge, the awareness of risk, and how chemical knowledge was acquired and authenticated. A collaborative inquiry approach was chosen so that the social interactions and practice of the research process would itself serve to exchange knowledge and improve communication and laboratory safety. A “survey─small group meeting” model for interaction with users of chemicals was developed and rolled out across PFR. Survey responses were received from 346 respondents who reported their usage of laboratory chemicals, and this was followed by interactive small group meetings with 38 biology-focused research teams located across 12 sites. While the survey provided a generally positive view of practice and perceptions of risk, the team visits provided more site-specific, granular, and informative insights into the handling of chemicals and functioning of laboratories. Textual analysis of contemporaneous notes identified six interconnecting themes associated with risk in the handling of chemicals: lack of knowledge resulting in uncertainty and unrecognized risks; practical difficulties in effecting structural changes to laboratories; poor engagement by a few key individuals; feelings of lack of support by safety managers; the presence of students, visitors, and new graduates needing extensive training; and work pressures resulting in poor decision-making. This research demonstrates the use of collaborative inquiry to provide the granular knowledge needed to improve safety in handling chemicals in biological laboratories.

Lung surfactant lowers surface tension in the alveoli, playing a critical role in lung function and immune defense. Inhaled aerosol particles may induce adverse health effects via the interruption of lung surfactant surface tension. Previous generations of surfactometers have been developed and used to characterize surfactants and their response to various exposures. However, these devices do not allow for simultaneous exposure with multiple aerosols, the incorporation of multiple aerosolization methods, or the co-exposure scenario involving both lung surfactant fluid and pulmonary cells/tissues. Herein, we introduce a new configuration, termed the aerosol exposure surfactometer (AESM), that addresses all of these limitations. The results indicate correlation of surface tension changes in concordance with aerosol properties while preventing unwanted cell death. Further investigation using this method may elucidate mechanisms of pathogenesis related to surfactant dysfunction and provide the foundation for predictive models.

The formation mechanism of boron subphthalocyanines (BsubPcs) has thus far evaded researchers, making it nearly impossible to accurately estimate the overall reaction enthalpy─a critical metric for determining chemical process safety for scale-up. To address this gap, reaction calorimetry was used to collect thermokinetic data for a baseline Br-BsubPc reaction at three temperatures and two BBr3 reagent ratios and a proposed semibatch process for Cl-BsubPc. For the Br-BsubPc process, the magnitude of the enthalpy of reaction (ΔHr) increased with increasing reaction temperature, from −244.6 kJ/mol-BBr3 at 25 °C to −332.7 kJ/mol-BBr3 at 50 °C to −391.3 kJ/mol-BBr3 at 75 °C. However, this increase in the magnitude of ΔHr did not result in a noticeable increase in Br-BsubPc yield, achieving 50%, 49%, and 52% yields at 25 °C, 50 °C, and 75 °C, respectively. When the molar equivalence of BBr3 was increased by 1.5× at 25 °C, the magnitude of ΔHr increased slightly (−252.2 kJ/mol-BBr3), but the yield did not improve (47%). Therefore, further attempts were made to try and improve the yield of Br-BsubPc by increasing the molar equivalence of BBr3. It was found that BBr3 equivalencies greater than 0.48 resulted in significant reductions in Br-BsubPc yield. The ΔHr of the semibatch Cl-BsubPc process was −266.5 kJ/mol-BCl3 with a yield of 33%. These processes were assessed based on criticality criteria and were both found to be “Criticality Class 1”, which is relatively safe for scale-up. Based on the calorimetry measurements, preliminary estimates for process conditions and reactor design for scale-up are provided.

Research and teaching have an array of unique hazards that reflects both the variety and continuous evaluation of their operation. These include technical, physical, chemical, or biological hazards. We are reporting a laboratory accident involving acryloyl chloride (chemical hazard), its consequences, safety precautions, and the lesson learned from this incident. Acryloyl chloride is a highly toxic and volatile liquid. After being accidentally exposed to acryloyl chloride, a victim experienced blackout, headache, dizziness, tiredness, nose bleeding, persistent burning of the eyes, and intense nausea and vomiting. A victim reported two distinct hazardous effects, namely, nose bleeding and stomach ulcers, which were not mentioned in the SDS of acryloyl chloride. To avoid further exacerbation of consequences of acryloyl chloride accident, it may be preferable to initiate steroidal therapy along with symptomatic treatment from the start. The accidental consequences and lessons learned from this tragedy will serve as guiding factors for research scholars, postdoctoral fellows, principal investigators (PI), safety professionals, institutions, occupational health nurses, physicians, and toxicologists to prevent anything similar from happening again in the future.