UNSAFE SCIENCE

Across the country, students in school science classrooms and other laboratory settings are being burned and injured when accidents occur during science demonstrations. (UNSAFE SCIENCE by Andrew Minister, NFPA Journal, September-October 2015.) NFPA Journal is the official magazine of the National Fire Protection Association NFPA.org 

Andrew Minister is chief fire protection engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and chair of NFPA's committee on Laboratories Using Chemicals.

A few of the resources in UNSAFE SCIENCE: 

CSB safety bulletin, “Key Lessons for Preventing Incidents from Flammable Chemicals in Educational Demonstrations.” By following the requirements of NFPA 45 and the lessons provided by the CSB, and by exercising caution and common sense in laboratory settings, schools and teachers can prevent these incidents that have resulted in injury and trauma to hundreds of students.

NFPA Lab Safety Tip sheet for Teachers and Students Download NFPA's Lab safety tip sheet. (PDF, 1.72 MB)

Laboratory Safety Institute (LSI), an international nonprofit education organization for laboratory safety that provides low-cost laboratory safety training and reference materials for schools.  

More at UNSAFE SCIENCE

 

• 8 Violations for School in Wake of Lab Fire

Fire Department investigators have cited Beacon High School in Manhattan for eight violations, finding that dangerous chemicals were being stored unsafely and that safety equipment and practices were lacking in at least three rooms. One was the makeshift lab where two students were engulfed in flames last week when a chemistry demonstration went horribly awry.

The department gave the school, which is on the Upper West Side, 10 days to correct some of the violations of fire and building codes, and 30 days for others. But it did not issue a “cease and desist” order, which could have closed the teaching labs, James Long, a Fire Department spokesman, said on Wednesday.

More

...Science safety experts say that the deficiencies found at Beacon are widespread in American schools, and that accidents that have maimed teachers and students keep happening because of systemic shortcomings.

School Experiment That Burned Boy Was Focus of Federal Warning

By NINA BERNSTEINJAN. 3, 2014 NYTIMES

Only weeks before a chemistry experiment sent a plume of fire across a Manhattan high school science lab, engulfing two students and leaving one with life-threatening burns, a federal safety agency issued a video warning of the dangers of the very same experiment, a common one across the country.

The agency, the United States Chemical Safety Board, distributed the video warning to its 60,000 subscribers, a spokeswoman, Hillary Cohen, said Friday, but it had no sure way to reach individual teachers at schools like Beacon High School on the Upper West Side. There on Thursday, Anna Poole, a young science teacher known for safety consciousness, used methanol as an accelerant to burn dishes of different minerals in the chemistry demonstration known as the Rainbow.

With about 30 students watching from their desks, a snakelike flame tore through the air, missing the students closest to the teacher’s desk, but enveloping Alonzo Yanes, 16, searing and melting the skin on his face and body, according to witnesses. He was in critical condition on Friday in the burn unit of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Myrna Manners, a hospital spokeswoman, said.

Another student, Julia Saltonstall, 16, saw her thin T-shirt burned off her torso in an instant as some of her long dark hair went up in smoke, her father said. Though she was no farther from the demonstration than Alonzo, she escaped with only first-degree burns.

More...

CSB Releases Safety Message on Preventing Accidents in High School Chemistry Labs

Washington, DC, December 10, 2013—The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) today released, “After the Rainbow,” (http://www.csb.gov/videos/after-the-rainbow/) a video safety message focused on potential dangers in high school chemistry laboratories. The message features Calais Weber, an accident survivor, who on January 23, 2006, at age 15 was burned over 40 per cent of her body during a chemistry demonstration performed by her teacher at a prestigious boarding school she attended in Ohio.

In her own words, Calais describes the demonstration, called the “rainbow experiment,” that was meant to show how various mineral salts produce different color flames when burned. Mineral salts were mixed with highly flammable methanol in small dishes. 

CSB Chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso said, “This is a new kind of video safety message for the CSB.  Too often, chemical accident victims –survivors as well as fatalities -- are forgotten as time goes on. In this video, Ms. Weber tells a painful and poignant story that we hope resonates in high school and academic labs across the country.”  The video is a follow up to “Experimenting with Danger,”concerning laboratory accidents in three major universities.   

More... http://www.csb.gov/csb-releases-safety-message-on-preventing-accidents-in-high-school-chemistry-labs/