I worked in a laboratory for decades and was constantly aware of the things that could go wrong. One day, the day I was not in the lab, a container of halogenated waste detonated unexpectedly showering the lab with acid and glass fragments. The force of the explosion broke all the windows within the lab and outside the lab, propelled the top of the container into the next room through a glass wall and turned the glass container into sand. No one was hurt, there was one technician in the room that was showered with glass and acid but made it to an emergency shower before any injuries. After an investigation by OSHA, and others, they still had no idea what caused the container to detonate to begin with.
Many academic labs have poor or no safety training at all. Not merely chemistry, but electronics and mechanical engineering. The safety failures in this report improved the awareness among academic administrators because there were financial consequences to the institutions, not because of humanitarian concerns. The deaths caused by the administrative neglect in these cases have resulted in some improvement.
I assume at the higher level education the assumption is that safety training was done earlier in one's academic career. Pre-emptively passing the buck, if you will. Redundancy is never unsafe, they should embrace that.
The problem with universities is that lots of teachers have got their position after being.. students.. no industry experience at all, university all their life. Everytime i have to work at a university lab (dealing with vacuum and plasmas), i tried hard not to focus on safety as i walked over cables and equipment laying all over the place in manners taht would make anyone with any kind of electronics and electricity background cringe. Always surprised these don't go up in smoke weekly. Even when making the safety assessment before starting working, i felt like they were wondering what the hell that paper was.
PPE is the last resort against something like this. That university needs some more safe working practices around stuff like that. Just a regular syringe for something that's gonna spontaneously combust when in contact with air? Having flammable chemicals around during that process? These are the deeper issues that when fixed will stop the need of ever using that PPE.
noturbinesinhell those things send me running just hearing them in a RUclips video. I feel like the chemicals can leech through the data signal and onto my hands.
Tertiary butylithium is notoriously famous for its high flammability, heard a lot of accidents handling this chemical. Have learned about a facility deals with this daily, in tons, they are equipped with special liquid nitrogen fire-extinguisher.
Just a note about the mortar and pestle; many people with explosives experience (ex-military especially) are used to working with shock, temperature, and pressure stable explosives. Naturally these kinds of explosives are much preferred for commercial use, almost exclusively so, and many such people are under the impression that the safety protocols they are used to are more or less universal. As this video shows, however, there are many many explosive chemicals which are shock, temperature, and pressure sensitive. Another good example that would surprise most people has to do with black powder fireworks: another video shows how the simple act of rolling a chair across a floor with black powder on it could cause an explosion.
Also, tert-bu-Li is no joke. Don't even work with in a fume hood, use an argon filled glove box. Plungers pop out, bottles get dropped. I've never heard of tert-bu-Li exposure that DIDN'T result in death.
Safety education needs to start in earnest at the middle school level. Students should not be ALLOWED to use laboratory equipment without passing safety tests. We most assuredly do NOT have a safety conscious culture or educational system. Safety is a habit that should be learned young. Students need to learn about preventable tragedies such as these (as part of curriculum) early on in science. What I see going from school to school is too frequently negligence in this regard.
I am a graduate student at a private research university. We have a rule that all individuals working in research labs must take a safety training course. Watching this video is part of that training.
The students cannot dictate safety protocols to staff. Teaching them the safe way to do things will mean nothing if admin does not buy PPE and teachers do not know the procedures. Putting pressure on students is pointless. The issue starts with leadership. Admin must be punished when this happens so that they will take it seriously. Most students would do things safely if given the tools and guidance.
That shit is bad news. I taught a bunch of people how to make that stuff in the early to mid 90s and I regret it after seeing how many people I knew who messed with it that had bad accidents with it. That stuff is nothing to fool around with!
I guess the only experience they had with the compound was when they first synthesized it in smaller batches. In small batches, the "clumps" are small enough that the hexane solvent they used inhibited the reaction. However, in the larger batch, the hexane couldn't reach the inside of the larger clumps, leaving them sensitive to friction. The lesson is that the hazards of scaling up a reaction can be unpredictable, and must be respected.
17:30 ‘CSB would like to see a tracking system of incidents and accidents.’ It’s astonishing to me that this hasn’t been mandated for decades. It’s obviously fundamental to safety culture and improved processes.
At the University of Oregon (where I am employed), there is an entire department of Safety and Risk Services, which tracks and monitors all accidents on campus. We are all required to report all injuries, no matter how small, so that annual reports can be compiled for administration to recommend improvements to policies, procedures, and physical property. While the system doesn't prevent all injuries (I've had a few injuries on the job), the system is extremely effective at enforcing changes to prevent repeat accidents. If I have an efficiency problem, it may never get addressed, but if I have a safety problem, you can bet it gets resolved immediately.
A lab in a company I used to work for had an uncontained leak from a cylinder of chlorine gas. Afterwards, the lab looked like it had been underwater for decades. All the metalwork was corroded to hell, and the varnish had all peeled off the wooden benches. Thankfully the staff all promptly evacuated and there were no casualties.
MeLi, BuLi and similar chemicals can be very dangerous. That unfortunate student absolutely should have been wearing a lab coat, and open solvent should have been nowhere near the whole area. Also it sounds to me like the transfer method was wildly inappropriate (we used to transfer it under inert gas). As for dimethyl mercury, you wouldn’t catch me touching it with a barge pole. Horrifically poisonous stuff.
A culture of safety is what is needed, and rules, training, and tests on the trivial minutia are unlikely to do much other than make folks feel good and keep lawyers happy. All too often the focus is on the number of cans, buckets, whatever, all the while ignoring the biggest safety hazard in the room as its too complex, too specialized, too spendy etc... The mentality that if the trivial stuff is ok, we don't need to worry about the elephant will eventually come back to bite. I think safety culture does need to start young, but it needs to be science thinking based, not just a rubric of rules. I've dealt with safety maniacs who are accidents waiting to happen, it almost appears they think their rules make them immune to danger.
You're right. A lot of times (perhaps due to lack of budget), OH&S or EH&S departments are left with no option except to hire inexperienced safety officers and coordinators. It all goes back to top-level management. If they allow safety departments to be cut out of operations and budget, there won't be sufficient safety, and you'll see accidents. It's been seen time and time again. Universities, hospitals, and research facilities have become more focused on money than proper safety programs and training.
Amen, personal safety should trump any other activity. Things happen, but losing a life is not worth the failures of safety training and safety steps when dealing with dangerous substances. Dimethyl mercury is a serious concern....
HUGE Problem - Departments are often absolutely powerless to enforce policies and it puts them in a "Catch 22". It always requires a serious accident before OH&S / EH&S Departments are given the authority they need in order to enforce and oversee what goes on in academic labs and especially medical universities, where doctors and administration often neglects safety and focuses on profits - even at State facilities.
Sheri was by herself there on a holiday period when most of the campus was closed, the question is WHY, and why was anyone allowed to be there alone without at least a 2nd person?
@HobbyOrganist she clearly shouldn't have been. But how do you enforce that? I think that's the point @JP-wx6uh is getting at - in most academic settings, there is no oversight or accountability for that. Saying "this is not allowed" is easy, ensuring that no one does it is difficult.
PhD student in biochemistry here- the whole system is set up to reward results over everything else. Professors' careers depend on their publications, and there are basically no regulations on how hard they choose to work their students. Further, grad students are classified as either employees or students whenever it serves the university, so lab culture is entirely dependent on the professor, and it's extremely common for students/lab workers to work long/strange hours for results. During the covid lockdowns, many labs tacitly encouraged students to sneak in and work anyway, despite things being supposedly closed. Until the system changes for the faculty, the resulting culture isn't likely to change IMO.
I guess the thinking is in mining you're dealing with huge amounts of over head equipment, huge amounts of electricity, huge amounts of torque from turning equipment, huge amounts of force from hydraulic cylinders, and last but not least. . huge amounts of explosives
I once was handling a container with base which swished up and hit me right on the safety glasses. I got assistance and was ok. My lab partner had no glasses on and was told to put them on. This was in collage. I was also sprayed in the safety glasses with acid after a long Pipette broke with 6M HCl. I got a tiny bit in my eye, I carried on and didn't report. I had slight irritation but it didn't hurt and I could see fine. This was in University. More pressure and less help will cause this.
I have seen an autoclave accident. It was awful. Fortunately two technicians hurt both survived with scars of course. I had warned them wait and let the pressure equalize. That was cold comfort. I never said I told you so. They had gotten the message.
Sadly, nothing has changed, especially reading the comments below from years past. I feel the current staff at my company lack the skill set to perform the common tasks at being at the bench. The amount of posted videos on LinkedIn I see, prove that this field is going in the wrong direction. Laboratory technique is the biggest fail point thus far. That young girl should have been wearing a fire retardant lab coat. She should been adding the BuLi solution via cannula under Argon low positive pressure. An Argon Balloon would have sufficed adding to a dropping funnel regulated to the given reaction.The sash of the fumehood should have been lowered to working height. She should not have been working alone. From what I gathered from this video, her reaction looks to have been rushed to cause back pressure in the syringe she was using. A colleague just performed a similar type of reaction, at a much larger scale. She executed the reaction flawlessly . Training goes a long long way, other then being mindful at the type of reaction being conducted. This girl was only 23 years old. She should have been taught a lot better technique, maybe she would have been alive today. Very sad. I see these types of behaviour in the labs where I work everyday. I literally saw a chemist moving a sealed 600 mL Pressure vessel filled with Hydrogen with a Pd/C 10% Catalyst at 400PSI by hand throughout the hallways. His supervisor currently has a record number of near misses with regards to Medium pressure Hg lamps at 450W for photochemical reactions in his lab. There shouldn’t be an excuse for this. That supervisor has yet to be even addressed or held accountable. Using the right PPE is pivotal in this field of work. This video was sent to me via email by our Health and Safety Team. Yet, the nitrile gloves given to staff are low ply, poor quality and break easily. Although, the gesture to promote awareness is there,this seems so very hypocritical.
@@maxpeterson8616I remember seeing a workplace poster in the 1980’s that said “Safety is not an accident”. Remembering those words has made me always take a pause before I engage in any activity where there is risk of danger to myself or others to review the safety rules, check my mental state, and set everything up as per the approved standards. There is always risk, but safety means reducing or removing all known and many potential unknown risks.
5 лет назад+3
Great you made this video. Hard to find alot of info. Thank you👏👏👏I knew as soon as they started talking the story they were referring to. Her Supervisor should've been prosecuted. I was reading about 1997 Mercury accident....
Case 1. Why was she wearing her own clothes she uses daily? I would newer dress in ordinary clothes when handling any materials. That is why workers have work clothes? If i work with unstable materials, my first Q is, what clothes and protective gear is minimum? I do not blame her, but safety need to be addresses at every level. Do not, ever, get into being just the slightest casual, and think it is just another normal day. It is not!
In university labs you usually just slap a lab coat on top, and put on safety goggles, depending on what you're doing gloves Nothing beyond gloves is provided to you. I was never in a spot to have seperate work clothes Also often you'll have lectures, meetings etc. on the same day as being in lab, and you got not time and space to change clothes in between. I often leave meetings for a few minutes to take care / monitor some less hazardous lab work, before going back to the meeting abd lecture
I'm not sure how got here, but it was a very informative video. It brought awareness to a whole different culture that's going on in the background of everyday life that I don't generally need to consider within my own. Oddly enough, I did know about the mercury/heavy metal poisoning case. It made a huge impact on me and caused me to re-evaluate my own health safety measures within my home by taking cleaning products more seriously, researching what I use for the chemical interactions with other products, what they are intended to be specifically used or designed for, and how to use them safely. It's actually quite crazy how much we take for granted in our daily activities without ever questioning if we should be so comfortable with the routines that we've established. I wonder how many people read the labels on bleach, or even give a second thought about the ingredients in the dish soap that they use multiple times a day. Few individuals that I know are aware that certain brands of dish soap warn about the negative interaction between the two, depending on the chemical compouds in the soap.
Back before smart phones, reading labels was one of the only things to do while sitting on the toilet. I guess that would only help your shampoo and bathroom cleaner education.
Tragic, being cut down early in life for such a talented person. Sad that safety was not priority. A life is impossible to replace... My heart goes out to her. You should never jeapordisze a life over production....
Because the filming guy just showed up some day and said "pipette something! Everyone knows that chemists always pipette stuff!" "But ... that's a closed system and the last step of my 39 step synthesis. If I open it, I will ruin it" "Then pipette something else! People want to see you do that!"
When I worked as a contractor in DuPont we were washing catalyst trays in an out of service reactor. One day a small fire started while we were washing with water. The material was not supposed to be reactive to water. We smothered it out and took a sample to the lab for testing. The stuff caught on fire while sitting in a plastic bag on the counter. No one new why. Come on now, this is a chemical company right?!😮
I worked at a paint and coating company, where a chain of errors caused a high-pressure chemical reaction in a reactor vessel, resulting in the bolted-on top of the reactor being blown off, and through the roof of the building. Lots of excitement that day! Fortunately nobody was hurt, but that reactor was offline for several weeks for investigations by various entities. This was back in about 1990.
Because college is full of total idiots. I've never seen one that had any sense. They can't read. They can't comprehend! Can't SPELL at a 3rd grade level. That's why.
It's very, very common. University safety culture in general is bad. I myself didn't learn any better until I started working in the pharmaceutical industry.
When you handle chemicals on a daily basis and barely anything ever goes wrong, it's easy to get complacent. Most things most people do in the lab don't absolutely require lab coats, but if you don't catch yourself before doing something that's actually dangerous, you might quickly find yourself in sticky situations.
I disturbed the Forensic Lab I was studying in by extracting pure Nitroglycerine from a double base shotgun powder bit of a headache and half an hour disposing of it in micropipettes and a Bunsen burner. My Military training before this took me through open field exercises using Sarin (Agent GB) and other very nasty compounds some of which are no longer made. I also had considerably live demolition training. Always know what you are dealing with, what special personal protective gear may be needed, what safe procedures are along with where and how to use emergency equipment. Keep all materials that are not being used for a procedure in hardened storage protected from both blast, splash and fumes.
When the chemical you work with is hypergolic with your bench, you clothes, the air, or *you* ... work slow and soft and keep what can happen at the front of your mind.
It kind of like knowing something about explosives chemistry and seeing a diagram of something organic with a whole mess of nitros and azides stuck on everywhere they'll fit. You just don't even want to look at that diagram, never mind get crazy and make the stuff.
I hadn't seen a USCSB video before the era of spectacular computer generated recreations. I have to say the hand-drawn images reflect the professionalism and excellence I've come to expect from the Chemical Safety Board. A rubber apron and face shield at the UCLA incident might have done the trick, but that's 12 years in hindsight from someone whos had a couple of things blow up in my face.
When Robert Goddard was doing research at WPI, he blew his lab up more than once. The Institute finally moved his research lab off campus to what is now Skull Tomb before he leveled the Chemistry Department.
A recent meme comes to mind. Today’s safety standards: “OMG, so scary 0.0001 M acetic acid! Put on a safety shield!” 1940s standards: “Remember to be very careful when pipetting concentrated sulfuric acid by mouth.”
Planning, PPE, and proper understanding of the hazards of the materials and processes and equipment you are dealing with usually are the safest plan, but, in research an overabundance of caution must be used because there may not be enough information about your doing.
This case always makes me so sad cuz her family really never got any justice for it and the professor took very minimal responsibility for his role in the accident. Safety in his lab is his purview, but he sure doesn’t seem to see it that way.
I still remember I save the whole lab from a big fire or explosion, it is in summer vacation, my collegue was doing flame fuel cell, but he forget to look for the flame, and the flame burn out along the wire to the machine, a GC. We have a lot of hydrogen cylinder in the lab! I just see this at that very moment, and put the fire down using fire extinguisher! I think I have saved the whole buliding and many lifes, I come from china and now a postdoc in US
I once damaged a bunch of equipment and coated an entire vacuum apparatus in fine soot by assembling it before all the solvent vapors from cleaning had flashed off and they ignited by a hot wire vacuum gauge. Luckily it was a very strong apparatus and contained the explosion and no one was hurt. Too often labwork is done by two groups of people: new grads and interns who don't understand how badly things can go wrong, and seasoned experts who think they are immune to rookie mistakes. I recommend this channel to a lot of my colleagues for presenting critical information in an engaging format.
One of these three incidents is not like the others. In between two cases of graduate students who didn't use standard precautions that should have been well known to them (and it's considered their seniors' responsibility, for not making it clear that they not only should do it, but must) -- is a senior researcher who used all the standard precautions she knew about. In her case, it didn't occur to her that she was working with a substance so unusual and extreme that the risks might not be fully known. She presumably could have come up with a plan for trying to avoid _unknown_ hazards if she had thought to. But I guess normalization of risk came into it in all three cases. For the students, they could have said, "This stuff is evidently dangerous: I should read up/ask around about how to handle it." But they weren't encouraged to think like that. The researcher could have said, "This stuff is so dangerous that I shouldn't rely on one source of information about it: if I can't find enough information, I 'll make a special plan for handling it." But none of her colleagues thought like that. So, that's why safety _culture_ is the word. A person's much more likely to think safely if everyone does.
Wait, TX does not have its own OSHA-approved state safety program. Then how come this exempts "public schools in TX" from complying with OSHA Laboratory Standard 29 CFR 1910.1450? I'm confused
States rights. Technically If it doesn’t go across state lines the State can tell the Federal Government to stay out of it. It’s how States legalize Marijuana when it’s federally illegal.
Texas tends to have its own totally separate system that has its own rules. For example, the Texas Water Commission enforces Texas laws concerning all water quality and pollution issues. Federal laws will apply to the vast majority of Texas processes, but Texas laws are an additional level. So they may mean that Texas lacks a department that duplicates OSHA enforcement and leaves that to the feds.
In the lab, we practiced using single-use (latex, Nitril...) gloves, which primarily protect the sample from contamination by you. Chemical-resistant gloves, on the other hand, are designed to protect *you* from potentially hazardous samples. Always be aware of the specific chemicals you're handling to ensure you use the appropriate protective gear and materials for safety.
there was a chemical spill that happened during lab when i was taking the general chemistry sequence at my local community college; the bottle of acid somehow exploded in his hands as he was opening it, there was glass all over the floor. i forget the exact chemical, but it was one of the more corrosive acids, i want to say sulfuric acid? anyway, the guy was lucky that the only casualty was his hoodie becoming tie-dye. professor took a picture of the broken bottle pieces to send to whoever was responsible for that type of stuff.
El video es muy interesante, principalmente para hacer conciencia de la importancia que tiene el buen manejo de los materiales dentro de un laboratorio de química, así como el implemento de las medidas de seguridad sugeridas por investigadores. Conocer el material con que se trabaja (químicos corrosivos e inflamables) para prevenir accidentes o en caso contrario contrarrestar daños. Usar el equipo y ropa adecuados, así como acatar con sumo cuidado cada instrucción y evitar cualquier desastre.
I've worked in construction/commercial painting and have seen many chemical accidents happen, once I even got DCM in my eyeball. Funny to me that we focus on these few freak accidents while people are dying everyday just trying to refinish their home/vehicles and im OSHA 30 certified
@@junkman8742 It is interesting the things sold over the counter to untrained, unknowning laypeople, isn't it? How to read labels and more importantly, how to THINK about safety is possibly something that should be in high schools, not just once, but throughout.
A common cause of a fire in our Lab would be an overnight reaction heated by a continuous boiling water bath. On some rare occasions the water supply would stop for a number of uncontrollable reasons leading to the water bath heating element turn red hot which would start the fire.
The nature of experimentation runs at odds with a prescribed safety program in that, all aspects (or outcomes) of the operations cannot always be reasonably predicted. The environment in which the experiment is conducted can be controlled, as well as the personal protective gear worn by the researcher. Also, many of these operations that involve physically mixing chemical substances could be performed with robotic devices, lessening the danger of burns and explosions to personnel.
1. What safety rules did the 23 year old research assistant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) not follow? 2. What safety rule did Professor Karen Wetterhan not follow while completing experiments at Dartmouth College? 3. What safety rules did the two graduate students at Texas Tech University not follow?
I'm not a chemist but I would presume you would need a sealed glove box (rather than a fume hood) to contain the nitrogen or whatever inert gas you would use to prevent combustion. Otherwise I could see someone inhaling a bit and potentially becoming hypoxic, judgement would probably slip leading to a higher risk of incident.
@@jds355 Nitrogen is commonly used when you deal compounds that are sensitive to air and water. Shlenk lines are commonly used. The containers for these sensitive organometallic compounds are have seals that prevent humidity and air from entering. The solutions are also stored under nitrogen. So when you need to take whatever volume you need, you use a syringe which you dried in an oven and you put a nitrogen ballon with a needle to maintain pressure or you use a nitrogen line with two needs to prevent overflow. Sure, argon is safer and a glovebox is even more safe, but argon is more expensive than nitrogen and glovebox are very expensive, not everybody can afford them. You're not a chemist and it shows.
If they were concerned by batch to batch differences in the explosive, they could prepare it in small batches, mix with solvent and combine the batches at the end maybe.
Safety. Your safety is on you. No one else is responsible for you getting back home in one piece at night. How do you get that far in school; and not know to wear the proper PPE when working with highly reactive chemicals? I’m saddened, surely Ms Sanjji. But it isn’t what “happened” to her; it’s what she did.
Pulls plunger out the back of syringe holding pyrophiric chemical in a hood with an open container orf flammable solvent while not wearing any PPE….sounds like training issue. Her professor is to blame
I had a job doing metal anodizing and got a small amount os Sulfuric Acid splashed on my face, luckilly it was only about 10 seconds to the wash stand but I'm lucky it wasn't worse, some minor surface burns with no lasting damage fortuatnely. Luckily battery acid is only about 30%
Should have done it in a flame hood with a positive pressure inert atmosphere. Alot of people on here talk about oh well how stupid it was to do it, but you know this process of grinding explosive materials into smaller granules is a common practice, its also how you make black powder. You add water to the mixture though to prevent explosion.
There is a BIG difference between gunpowder and modern, primary explosives... The first one isn't even a "real" explosive as it will just burn quickly, but not detonate unless you put it in a confined space. Perchlorates (and other primary explosives) will explode and send pieces of whatever they where sitting on flying. So yeah, grinding 5g of primary explosives is just as stupid as everyone else is saying... When it goes off, your hand will probably either just disintegrate or be filled with the fragments of your mortar. Now to the "When": If a "close relative" of the substance you are working with (NHN) has a friction sensitivity of 16 N (when grinding it with a pestle), it is a rather stupid idea to put it anywhere near a mortar as you will exceed this force quite easily. So: The idea of grinding it was extremely dumb, as is any idea of grinding a new explosive substance for which no datasheets exist. And yes, no one knew if that new compound would be explosive, but if you are combining two known explosives (Nickel hydrazine and a perchlorate) it's a good idea to handle it like it IS in fact explosive. Oh, and just to add to your misunderstanding/lack of knowledge: It would have exploded under an inert atmosphere since it already had the oxygen needed to decompose (explode) in form of the perchlorate (a Chlorine atom with four(!!) oxygen atoms attached to it). Nearly every explosive substances (if not all) have their own oxygen needed for decomposition as it would take to long to get oxygen out of the air, thereby slowing down the explosion and making it "just" highly flammable.
@@eulemitbeule5426 oxygen is one of the most reactive things known. its what gives acids there power virtually all acids contain oxygen. ammonium nitrate is fairly safe to handle and will simply burn vigorously if ignited unless its mixed with fuel and contained. on its own its a strong oxidiser. ammonia it self is flammable the main danger though is its highly toxic and corrosive. there was a incident a few yrs back involving a truck rollover and ammonium nitrate when they tried to extinguish the fire it exploded. had they just spread it out and let it burn itself out it probably wouldnt have detonated. it completely destroyed a fire truck 2 cop cars and a rail bridge that was near by.
@@chrisforgan731 Ammonium nitrate is believed to build up pressure when smoldering in a piled up condition, as was the case in West, TX and Beirut, Lebanon. As the AN gets hot, it becomes less stable, and that can be very dangerous. Remember, that for explosion, your fire also needs confinement and pressure. A trailer load of AN can rapidly build up to an explosive condition when burning. Very early irrigation / deluge with copius amounts of water will dissolve and disperse the fuel supply. In addition to the heat removed by evaporation of the fire fighting water, dissolving ammonium nitrate is endothermic, and chills its surroundings. That said, there are frequently conditions where the fire is already too energetic, and the AN thus is too unstable to approach, and then the proper method is to pull back to a safe distance and let it burn / explode.
They should have had enclosed chambers with gloves in holes to work with the chemical, and the chamber should have been filled with something like pure nitrogen or argon.
@@greyfox3755 yep, though if you read anything from experienced chemists you'll know the procedure she was using is pretty standard, the lack of safety equipment not so much.
@@darthkarl99 I think that I can guess why. The money that funds the research is fiat currency. So, the students are under pressure to perform under substandard conditions to cut costs. We should blame the bank notes.
@@henryng439 When i say experienced chemists i'm including industrial chemists and the like working in company, not academic labs. From what i've read short of somthing chatastrophic like the plunger failure it fairly safe as the amount you can squeeze out through the needle end will generally burn up before it can set anything on fire. It takes a very large spill or direct application to fairly flammable material to get it to start a fire. The situation that occurred is about as bad as a spill of it can get in terms of ability to set things on fire, proper protective clothing and proper safety precautions like removing nearby solvents makes even that a relatively mild accident.
Improper personal protection equipment, handling highly unstable chemicals required stringent safety protocols, including a fire watch ,flame retardant clothing
We just realized we have no fire extinguishers in the same room as our tissue processor which has xylene and methanol in it… along with all the stains.
would like to ask some questions about the solutions by apply all the hierarchy of control to prevent similar accidents in future of Texas Tech Lessons that happened on 7 January 2010. Thank you
One of the better videos, but like the instructionals for physical safety that are recommended herein, there should be highlights throughout the video for untrained listeners for when they might be listening to bullshit. My warning alerts sounded a few times.
Karen and the mercury compound were featured in another channels video by Chubbyemu- "Description I make medical videos, telling stories in medicine. These are variations on cases I, or my colleagues, have seen in the past. The main goal of these videos are to tell a story about people, as we each have a unique story to tell." The SDS sheet the chemical co provided saying to use latex gloves was accurate, but you DO have to buy QUALITY gloves and only use them ONCE, I suspect karen either had cheap ones supplied by the University, or she took them off more than once and re-used them. I cant imagine why anyone would feel the need to mess with dimethylmercury in the first place!
In experiments sometimes things just go wrong and you have to be prepared for any eventuality. One of our science teachers recalled an incident when she was preparing the test where you put Lithium, Sodium and Potassium in a large bowl with some water, she was testing it out when she was back blown into a cupboard. Must have been a dodgy batch of one of the metals.
Wearing a synthetic sweater... Sorry.. I've only spoken English for about 55 years but does that mean this person wasnt wearing proper lab gear and, in fact promoted the incident with the clothes she was wearing? Doesnt that sound negligent? Like she was to blame? Too honest? So many questions.
In the third incident...it might have been wise to call Dr. Thomas Kläpotke in Munich or Dr. Jean'nee Shreeve at the University of Idaho and pose this question: "We're thinking of making a ten-gram batch of nickel hydrazine perchlorate; do you have any safety recommendations?" The "recommendation" would most likely have been "don't do that." "How should we break up the lumps in our 10-gram sample of nickel hydrazine perchlorate?" "Place the sample in a ball mill and move back before turning it on." "How far should we move back?" "Tennessee should be fine."
100% the fault of the PI and the Chemistry Dept. safety officer. But as usual no one will be held accountable, and we'll keep reading about completely preventable episodes like this. In the US, because our official religion is the love of money above all else, you have to be your own first responder, no one is looking out for you despite all of the propaganda otherwise. Act accordingly.
For larger than 5-10 mL of something like tBuLi she should have cannulated it into a flame-dried graduated cylinder under nitrogen then cannulated it into her reaction. That was standard procedure in my graduate lab.
I worked in a laboratory for decades and was constantly aware of the things that could go wrong. One day, the day I was not in the lab, a container of halogenated waste detonated unexpectedly showering the lab with acid and glass fragments. The force of the explosion broke all the windows within the lab and outside the lab, propelled the top of the container into the next room through a glass wall and turned the glass container into sand. No one was hurt, there was one technician in the room that was showered with glass and acid but made it to an emergency shower before any injuries. After an investigation by OSHA, and others, they still had no idea what caused the container to detonate to begin with.
Holy shit! You're very lucky. Especially that guy who made it to the shower.
Someone looked at it wrong.
A brisk fart could set that shit off.
Undetermined ignition sauce got spilled on it. They say that one alot.
Thank you for sharing your lab safety story.
Many academic labs have poor or no safety training at all. Not merely chemistry, but electronics and mechanical engineering. The safety failures in this report improved the awareness among academic administrators because there were financial consequences to the institutions, not because of humanitarian concerns. The deaths caused by the administrative neglect in these cases have resulted in some improvement.
many safety trainers have no chemistry background
What makes you think there were no humanitarian concerns involved? :-(
I assume at the higher level education the assumption is that safety training was done earlier in one's academic career.
Pre-emptively passing the buck, if you will. Redundancy is never unsafe, they should embrace that.
It gets pretty scary in many biology/biochemistry labs.
The problem with universities is that lots of teachers have got their position after being.. students.. no industry experience at all, university all their life. Everytime i have to work at a university lab (dealing with vacuum and plasmas), i tried hard not to focus on safety as i walked over cables and equipment laying all over the place in manners taht would make anyone with any kind of electronics and electricity background cringe. Always surprised these don't go up in smoke weekly.
Even when making the safety assessment before starting working, i felt like they were wondering what the hell that paper was.
"hydrazine" and "perchlorate" would send me running if I had no PPE.
PPE? I think you mean "bomb robot".
Did work with hydrazine as part of my education ..very evil stuff ..The positive thing was that I got a lab all to my self..
PPE is the last resort against something like this. That university needs some more safe working practices around stuff like that. Just a regular syringe for something that's gonna spontaneously combust when in contact with air? Having flammable chemicals around during that process? These are the deeper issues that when fixed will stop the need of ever using that PPE.
noturbinesinhell TEA
noturbinesinhell those things send me running just hearing them in a RUclips video. I feel like the chemicals can leech through the data signal and onto my hands.
Tertiary butylithium is notoriously famous for its high flammability, heard a lot of accidents handling this chemical. Have learned about a facility deals with this daily, in tons, they are equipped with special liquid nitrogen fire-extinguisher.
And it will chemically burn you while it's burning you with fire :(
@@jogandspNow with added freezer burn 😊
It's not just flammable, it's pyrophoric, it catches on fire the moment it comes into contact with air
Just a note about the mortar and pestle; many people with explosives experience (ex-military especially) are used to working with shock, temperature, and pressure stable explosives. Naturally these kinds of explosives are much preferred for commercial use, almost exclusively so, and many such people are under the impression that the safety protocols they are used to are more or less universal. As this video shows, however, there are many many explosive chemicals which are shock, temperature, and pressure sensitive. Another good example that would surprise most people has to do with black powder fireworks: another video shows how the simple act of rolling a chair across a floor with black powder on it could cause an explosion.
Also, tert-bu-Li is no joke. Don't even work with in a fume hood, use an argon filled glove box. Plungers pop out, bottles get dropped. I've never heard of tert-bu-Li exposure that DIDN'T result in death.
@@jermainerace4156 When the fire diamond is all 4's, you better believe it's no joke
@@samuelberz1476 for real. even the radioisotope lab in my department isn't all 4's, and they work with, well, radioactive isotopes.
@@jermainerace4156glove box are pain to use, just people need to think bout they are doing
He knew he was working on Primary energetic… when I heard that 10g of it was put in a mortar😮
Safety education needs to start in earnest at the middle school level. Students should not be ALLOWED to use laboratory equipment without passing safety tests. We most assuredly do NOT have a safety conscious culture or educational system. Safety is a habit that should be learned young. Students need to learn about preventable tragedies such as these (as part of curriculum) early on in science. What I see going from school to school is too frequently negligence in this regard.
I am a graduate student at a private research university. We have a rule that all individuals working in research labs must take a safety training course. Watching this video is part of that training.
The students cannot dictate safety protocols to staff. Teaching them the safe way to do things will mean nothing if admin does not buy PPE and teachers do not know the procedures. Putting pressure on students is pointless.
The issue starts with leadership. Admin must be punished when this happens so that they will take it seriously. Most students would do things safely if given the tools and guidance.
That particular SDS (for the Dimethyl mercury) was a contributing factor IMO.
Dimethyl mercury is pretty high up there on the list of genuinely horrifying chemicals
Three years later but I'm agreeing with you
"A chemistry student decided to mortar and pestle a primary explosive." Had me laughing. Other than that, very informative video.
+Chemistry right the fucker is crazy, my next time he can grind up some TATP crystals.
That shit is bad news. I taught a bunch of people how to make that stuff in the early to mid 90s and I regret it after seeing how many people I knew who messed with it that had bad accidents with it. That stuff is nothing to fool around with!
I guess the only experience they had with the compound was when they first synthesized it in smaller batches. In small batches, the "clumps" are small enough that the hexane solvent they used inhibited the reaction. However, in the larger batch, the hexane couldn't reach the inside of the larger clumps, leaving them sensitive to friction.
The lesson is that the hazards of scaling up a reaction can be unpredictable, and must be respected.
what are you supposed to do then idiot? she used too much it's her fault not the procedure fucktard
test successful.
The really scary thing is that someone else could be tired, irritated or under pressure and screw up with disastrous results to you.
Welcome to freeway driving.....!
That's why I'm.over here. And know well, if property is cheap near some kind of plant, there's a reason for that.
That’s my nightmare-the person next to me making a mistake
I’m becoming addicted to these videos
Your not the only, these videos are addicting
I can stop anytime.
@@Bankable2790 no you can't lol
no one cares
I simply enjoy the in depth nature of these vids and watch them on ocasions
17:30 ‘CSB would like to see a tracking system of incidents and accidents.’ It’s astonishing to me that this hasn’t been mandated for decades. It’s obviously fundamental to safety culture and improved processes.
Inactive people sat and watched too
Til us people enforce the rules they have no incentive
At the University of Oregon (where I am employed), there is an entire department of Safety and Risk Services, which tracks and monitors all accidents on campus. We are all required to report all injuries, no matter how small, so that annual reports can be compiled for administration to recommend improvements to policies, procedures, and physical property. While the system doesn't prevent all injuries (I've had a few injuries on the job), the system is extremely effective at enforcing changes to prevent repeat accidents. If I have an efficiency problem, it may never get addressed, but if I have a safety problem, you can bet it gets resolved immediately.
It would mean facilities would have to self police/report. And if they did it would look bad on them
A lab in a company I used to work for had an uncontained leak from a cylinder of chlorine gas. Afterwards, the lab looked like it had been underwater for decades. All the metalwork was corroded to hell, and the varnish had all peeled off the wooden benches. Thankfully the staff all promptly evacuated and there were no casualties.
Stainless no more...
Very sad, such a young girl dying so horribly is a tragedy. Rest in peace, Shari. 😞
MeLi, BuLi and similar chemicals can be very dangerous. That unfortunate student absolutely should have been wearing a lab coat, and open solvent should have been nowhere near the whole area. Also it sounds to me like the transfer method was wildly inappropriate (we used to transfer it under inert gas).
As for dimethyl mercury, you wouldn’t catch me touching it with a barge pole. Horrifically poisonous stuff.
Transfering it under inert gas is pain in the ass… people have to think in lab about what they are doing? How you pull the plunger out!!!??
BuLi is less reactive than MeLi and t-BuLi.
Also, you normally use a syringe to transfer it and you take some nitrogen after taking the solution.
"With great power comes great responsibility"
Unless you're in management, apparently...
Yuuuup. My lab is poorly managed too.
You mean "unless you're in MANGLEMENT,..."
Or have some type of city job, where you can kill hundreds of people with complete immunity. Fire marshalls and building inspectors come to mind.
In 1984, my high school chemistry teacher was demonstrating white phospher and dropped some. We learned how to operate a fire extinguisher that day.
Didn't happen
@@1lapmagicYou didn't happen
Sure you did. And then the ad played?
The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' by Sidney Dekker is a must read for everyone.
What a great read!!! Thank you for the recommendation. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
A culture of safety is what is needed, and rules, training, and tests on the trivial minutia are unlikely to do much other than make folks feel good and keep lawyers happy. All too often the focus is on the number of cans, buckets, whatever, all the while ignoring the biggest safety hazard in the room as its too complex, too specialized, too spendy etc... The mentality that if the trivial stuff is ok, we don't need to worry about the elephant will eventually come back to bite. I think safety culture does need to start young, but it needs to be science thinking based, not just a rubric of rules. I've dealt with safety maniacs who are accidents waiting to happen, it almost appears they think their rules make them immune to danger.
You're right. A lot of times (perhaps due to lack of budget), OH&S or EH&S departments are left with no option except to hire inexperienced safety officers and coordinators. It all goes back to top-level management. If they allow safety departments to be cut out of operations and budget, there won't be sufficient safety, and you'll see accidents. It's been seen time and time again. Universities, hospitals, and research facilities have become more focused on money than proper safety programs and training.
Amen, personal safety should trump any other activity. Things happen, but losing a life is not worth the failures of safety training and safety steps when dealing with dangerous substances. Dimethyl mercury is a serious concern....
HUGE Problem - Departments are often absolutely powerless to enforce policies and it puts them in a "Catch 22". It always requires a serious accident before OH&S / EH&S Departments are given the authority they need in order to enforce and oversee what goes on in academic labs and especially medical universities, where doctors and administration often neglects safety and focuses on profits - even at State facilities.
Sheri was by herself there on a holiday period when most of the campus was closed, the question is WHY, and why was anyone allowed to be there alone without at least a 2nd person?
@HobbyOrganist she clearly shouldn't have been. But how do you enforce that? I think that's the point @JP-wx6uh is getting at - in most academic settings, there is no oversight or accountability for that. Saying "this is not allowed" is easy, ensuring that no one does it is difficult.
PhD student in biochemistry here- the whole system is set up to reward results over everything else. Professors' careers depend on their publications, and there are basically no regulations on how hard they choose to work their students. Further, grad students are classified as either employees or students whenever it serves the university, so lab culture is entirely dependent on the professor, and it's extremely common for students/lab workers to work long/strange hours for results. During the covid lockdowns, many labs tacitly encouraged students to sneak in and work anyway, despite things being supposedly closed. Until the system changes for the faculty, the resulting culture isn't likely to change IMO.
If we need safety practices in mining, it ought to filter into everything else. Taking care of ourselves is OUR job.
Thanks CSB!
I guess the thinking is in mining you're dealing with huge amounts of over head equipment, huge amounts of electricity, huge amounts of torque from turning equipment, huge amounts of force from hydraulic cylinders, and last but not least. . huge amounts of explosives
@@ShannonDove-sy7ye True and it trickles down, right to the bottom. Might be a small amout but it's still there.
I once was handling a container with base which swished up and hit me right on the safety glasses. I got assistance and was ok. My lab partner had no glasses on and was told to put them on. This was in collage.
I was also sprayed in the safety glasses with acid after a long Pipette broke with 6M HCl. I got a tiny bit in my eye, I carried on and didn't report. I had slight irritation but it didn't hurt and I could see fine. This was in University. More pressure and less help will cause this.
I have seen an autoclave accident. It was awful. Fortunately two technicians hurt both survived with scars of course. I had warned them wait and let the pressure equalize. That was cold comfort. I never said I told you so. They had gotten the message.
13:55 "Insufficient safety accountability and oversight by the principal investigators."
Well duh. My PI hasn't stepped in my lab in a year.
We learn about Sherry in our inorganic undergrad lab when we deal with nBuLi. Her death wasn’t in vain many have learned safety from her!
Sadly, nothing has changed, especially reading the comments below from years past. I feel the current staff at my company lack the skill set to perform the common tasks at being at the bench. The amount of posted videos on LinkedIn I see, prove that this field is going in the wrong direction. Laboratory technique is the biggest fail point thus far. That young girl should have been wearing a fire retardant lab coat. She should been adding the BuLi solution via cannula under Argon low positive pressure. An Argon Balloon would have sufficed adding to a dropping funnel regulated to the given reaction.The sash of the fumehood should have been lowered to working height. She should not have been working alone. From what I gathered from this video, her reaction looks to have been rushed to cause back pressure in the syringe she was using. A colleague just performed a similar type of reaction, at a much larger scale. She executed the reaction flawlessly . Training goes a long long way, other then being mindful at the type of reaction being conducted.
This girl was only 23 years old. She should have been taught a lot better technique, maybe she would have been alive today. Very sad.
I see these types of behaviour in the labs where I work everyday. I literally saw a chemist moving a sealed 600 mL Pressure vessel filled with Hydrogen with a Pd/C 10% Catalyst at 400PSI by hand throughout the hallways. His supervisor currently has a record number of near misses with regards to Medium pressure Hg lamps at 450W for photochemical reactions in his lab.
There shouldn’t be an excuse for this.
That supervisor has yet to be even addressed or held accountable.
Using the right PPE is pivotal in this field of work. This video was sent to me via email by our Health and Safety Team. Yet, the nitrile gloves given to staff are low ply, poor quality and break easily. Although, the gesture to promote awareness is there,this seems so very hypocritical.
I work in a refinery. A contractor was recently shown to the gate for not wearing proper safety glasses. This laxitude shocks me.
@@maxpeterson8616I remember seeing a workplace poster in the 1980’s that said “Safety is not an accident”. Remembering those words has made me always take a pause before I engage in any activity where there is risk of danger to myself or others to review the safety rules, check my mental state, and set everything up as per the approved standards. There is always risk, but safety means reducing or removing all known and many potential unknown risks.
Great you made this video. Hard to find alot of info. Thank you👏👏👏I knew as soon as they started talking the story they were referring to. Her Supervisor should've been prosecuted. I was reading about 1997 Mercury accident....
Case 1. Why was she wearing her own clothes she uses daily? I would newer dress in ordinary clothes when handling any materials. That is why workers have work clothes? If i work with unstable materials, my first Q is, what clothes and protective gear is minimum? I do not blame her, but safety need to be addresses at every level. Do not, ever, get into being just the slightest casual, and think it is just another normal day. It is not!
I agree.
If I was working with chemicals that self ignite I would dress like a welder, no synthetics.
Lack of knowledge und caré-Łess
In university labs you usually just slap a lab coat on top, and put on safety goggles, depending on what you're doing gloves
Nothing beyond gloves is provided to you. I was never in a spot to have seperate work clothes
Also often you'll have lectures, meetings etc. on the same day as being in lab, and you got not time and space to change clothes in between. I often leave meetings for a few minutes to take care / monitor some less hazardous lab work, before going back to the meeting abd lecture
I'm not sure how got here, but it was a very informative video.
It brought awareness to a whole different culture that's going on in the background of everyday life that I don't generally need to consider within my own.
Oddly enough, I did know about the mercury/heavy metal poisoning case.
It made a huge impact on me and caused me to re-evaluate my own health safety measures within my home by taking cleaning products more seriously, researching what I use for the chemical interactions with other products, what they are intended to be specifically used or designed for, and how to use them safely.
It's actually quite crazy how much we take for granted in our daily activities without ever questioning if we should be so comfortable with the routines that we've established.
I wonder how many people read the labels on bleach, or even give a second thought about the ingredients in the dish soap that they use multiple times a day.
Few individuals that I know are aware that certain brands of dish soap warn about the negative interaction between the two, depending on the chemical compouds in the soap.
Back before smart phones, reading labels was one of the only things to do while sitting on the toilet. I guess that would only help your shampoo and bathroom cleaner education.
"Welcome to my laboratory, where safety is not even a priority."
Safety regulations are often paid for in blood and lives. A cost much cheaper than money.
@@tactknightgaming2066Lechekdisout
What's safety??
"Safety Third", right??
Tragic, being cut down early in life for such a talented person. Sad that safety was not priority. A life is impossible to replace... My heart goes out to her. You should never jeapordisze a life over production....
The stock footage just confuses me... Why would the girl at 15:18 take out samples of the heating bath? It's just a bowl of tap water!
Because the filming guy just showed up some day and said "pipette something! Everyone knows that chemists always pipette stuff!" "But ... that's a closed system and the last step of my 39 step synthesis. If I open it, I will ruin it" "Then pipette something else! People want to see you do that!"
Lol
When I worked as a contractor in DuPont we were washing catalyst trays in an out of service reactor. One day a small fire started while we were washing with water. The material was not supposed to be reactive to water. We smothered it out and took a sample to the lab for testing. The stuff caught on fire while sitting in a plastic bag on the counter. No one new why. Come on now, this is a chemical company right?!😮
I worked at a paint and coating company, where a chain of errors caused a high-pressure chemical reaction in a reactor vessel, resulting in the bolted-on top of the reactor being blown off, and through the roof of the building. Lots of excitement that day! Fortunately nobody was hurt, but that reactor was offline for several weeks for investigations by various entities. This was back in about 1990.
She has no PPE ON??????? HOW. How do u go to school for chemistry and you handle deadly shit without PPE
Because college is full of total idiots. I've never seen one that had any sense. They can't read. They can't comprehend! Can't SPELL at a 3rd grade level.
That's why.
It's very, very common. University safety culture in general is bad. I myself didn't learn any better until I started working in the pharmaceutical industry.
When you handle chemicals on a daily basis and barely anything ever goes wrong, it's easy to get complacent. Most things most people do in the lab don't absolutely require lab coats, but if you don't catch yourself before doing something that's actually dangerous, you might quickly find yourself in sticky situations.
We learned about the fire at UCLA in high school chemistry class. Scary stuff
I never understood why students don't wear PPEs. This isn't a family barbecue. You're working with CHEMICALS!!!
because university administration is too cheap to get proper PPE for their students.
I disturbed the Forensic Lab I was studying in by extracting pure Nitroglycerine from a double base shotgun powder bit of a headache and half an hour disposing of it in micropipettes and a Bunsen burner. My Military training before this took me through open field exercises using Sarin (Agent GB) and other very nasty compounds some of which are no longer made. I also had considerably live demolition training.
Always know what you are dealing with, what special personal protective gear may be needed, what safe procedures are along with where and how to use emergency equipment. Keep all materials that are not being used for a procedure in hardened storage protected from both blast, splash and fumes.
Effective research-specific HazCom and training r key factors here. Thanks CSB for sharing.
When the chemical you work with is hypergolic with your bench, you clothes, the air, or *you* ... work slow and soft and keep what can happen at the front of your mind.
having watched a NASA safety video on youtube about Hydrazine anything, That stuff is seriously terrifying.
I believe perchlorates tend to explode if you look at them funny, too - so I'm sure combining the two makes for a generally worrisome thing to handle.
It kind of like knowing something about explosives chemistry and seeing a diagram of something organic with a whole mess of nitros and azides stuck on everywhere they'll fit.
You just don't even want to look at that diagram, never mind get crazy and make the stuff.
I hadn't seen a USCSB video before the era of spectacular computer generated recreations. I have to say the hand-drawn images reflect the professionalism and excellence I've come to expect from the Chemical Safety Board. A rubber apron and face shield at the UCLA incident might have done the trick, but that's 12 years in hindsight from someone whos had a couple of things blow up in my face.
SDS give you a pretty clear guide for what label peppery your working materials. It’s not rocket science until you ignore them💥🔥
Be smart, take every single precaution you can.
Safety first always
just make sure your Different Precautions do not Cancel each other Out.
When Robert Goddard was doing research at WPI, he blew his lab up more than once. The Institute finally moved his research lab off campus to what is now Skull Tomb before he leveled the Chemistry Department.
A recent meme comes to mind. Today’s safety standards: “OMG, so scary 0.0001 M acetic acid! Put on a safety shield!”
1940s standards: “Remember to be very careful when pipetting concentrated sulfuric acid by mouth.”
Planning, PPE, and proper understanding of the hazards of the materials and processes and equipment you are dealing with usually are the safest plan, but, in research an overabundance of caution must be used because there may not be enough information about your doing.
I think the problem is blunt stupidity and nonexistent reading comprehension skills.
Great video. Very informative and useful.
This case always makes me so sad cuz her family really never got any justice for it and the professor took very minimal responsibility for his role in the accident. Safety in his lab is his purview, but he sure doesn’t seem to see it that way.
It's for everyone's safety. Just wear the PPE!
I still remember I save the whole lab from a big fire or explosion, it is in summer vacation, my collegue was doing flame fuel cell, but he forget to look for the flame, and the flame burn out along the wire to the machine, a GC. We have a lot of hydrogen cylinder in the lab! I just see this at that very moment, and put the fire down using fire extinguisher! I think I have saved the whole buliding and many lifes, I come from china and now a postdoc in US
If you link high accident rates to a drop in shareholder's earnings, through regulation and taxation, accident rates and injury severity would drop.
Welcome to "management pressuring employees to not report accidents and near misses"
I can't believe they just let people handle dangerous items with barely any PPE.
I once damaged a bunch of equipment and coated an entire vacuum apparatus in fine soot by assembling it before all the solvent vapors from cleaning had flashed off and they ignited by a hot wire vacuum gauge. Luckily it was a very strong apparatus and contained the explosion and no one was hurt. Too often labwork is done by two groups of people: new grads and interns who don't understand how badly things can go wrong, and seasoned experts who think they are immune to rookie mistakes. I recommend this channel to a lot of my colleagues for presenting critical information in an engaging format.
Oof. You do not mess with dimethylmercury. RIP lady.
But she aced all her lecture exams?!!
One of these three incidents is not like the others. In between two cases of graduate students who didn't use standard precautions that should have been well known to them (and it's considered their seniors' responsibility, for not making it clear that they not only should do it, but must) -- is a senior researcher who used all the standard precautions she knew about. In her case, it didn't occur to her that she was working with a substance so unusual and extreme that the risks might not be fully known. She presumably could have come up with a plan for trying to avoid _unknown_ hazards if she had thought to.
But I guess normalization of risk came into it in all three cases. For the students, they could have said, "This stuff is evidently dangerous: I should read up/ask around about how to handle it." But they weren't encouraged to think like that. The researcher could have said, "This stuff is so dangerous that I shouldn't rely on one source of information about it: if I can't find enough information, I 'll make a special plan for handling it." But none of her colleagues thought like that. So, that's why safety _culture_ is the word. A person's much more likely to think safely if everyone does.
Latex gloves vs mercury.... Very careful indeed
tecnically you are wrong because it was not elemental
Wait, TX does not have its own OSHA-approved state safety program. Then how come this exempts "public schools in TX" from complying with OSHA Laboratory Standard 29 CFR 1910.1450? I'm confused
Ikr I did not get that lol.
States rights. Technically If it doesn’t go across state lines the State can tell the Federal Government to stay out of it. It’s how States legalize Marijuana when it’s federally illegal.
Texas tends to have its own totally separate system that has its own rules. For example, the Texas Water Commission enforces Texas laws concerning all water quality and pollution issues. Federal laws will apply to the vast majority of Texas processes, but Texas laws are an additional level. So they may mean that Texas lacks a department that duplicates OSHA enforcement and leaves that to the feds.
The US Congress has never amended the OSHA Act of 970 to include Public Education Institutions.
UCLA tried to deny any wrongdoing in the Sheri's case. Shameful.
In the lab, we practiced using single-use (latex, Nitril...) gloves, which primarily protect the sample from contamination by you. Chemical-resistant gloves, on the other hand, are designed to protect *you* from potentially hazardous samples. Always be aware of the specific chemicals you're handling to ensure you use the appropriate protective gear and materials for safety.
there was a chemical spill that happened during lab when i was taking the general chemistry sequence at my local community college; the bottle of acid somehow exploded in his hands as he was opening it, there was glass all over the floor. i forget the exact chemical, but it was one of the more corrosive acids, i want to say sulfuric acid? anyway, the guy was lucky that the only casualty was his hoodie becoming tie-dye. professor took a picture of the broken bottle pieces to send to whoever was responsible for that type of stuff.
El video es muy interesante, principalmente para hacer conciencia de la importancia que tiene el buen manejo de los materiales dentro de un laboratorio de química, así como el implemento de las medidas de seguridad sugeridas por investigadores. Conocer el material con que se trabaja (químicos corrosivos e inflamables) para prevenir accidentes o en caso contrario contrarrestar daños. Usar el equipo y ropa adecuados, así como acatar con sumo cuidado cada instrucción y evitar cualquier desastre.
Her death is so heartbreaking.
So glad I studied soil science. We did not need glasses in the lab lol.
I'm doing biochem with very little hazards, but a close friend of mine decided to do fluorine chemistry. Why?!
Ignites on contact with air... why does she even have that
I've worked in construction/commercial painting and have seen many chemical accidents happen, once I even got DCM in my eyeball. Funny to me that we focus on these few freak accidents while people are dying everyday just trying to refinish their home/vehicles and im OSHA 30 certified
@@junkman8742 It is interesting the things sold over the counter to untrained, unknowning laypeople, isn't it? How to read labels and more importantly, how to THINK about safety is possibly something that should be in high schools, not just once, but throughout.
Found out about all of these first through In The Pipeline.
A common cause of a fire in our Lab would be an overnight reaction heated by a continuous boiling water bath. On some rare occasions the water supply would stop for a number of uncontrollable reasons leading to the water bath heating element turn red hot which would start the fire.
Great safety video.
Apologies if this is a naive question, but why are labs dealing with dangerous chemicals still using open-face hoods instead of sealed gloveboxes?
As a grad student who works with and maintains an inert glovebox for her work... they're an expensive PITA
Gloveboxes are expensive and not all labs can afford them
The nature of experimentation runs at odds with a prescribed safety program in that, all aspects (or outcomes) of the operations cannot always be reasonably predicted. The environment in which the experiment is conducted can be controlled, as well as the personal protective gear worn by the researcher. Also, many of these operations that involve physically mixing chemical substances could be performed with robotic devices, lessening the danger of burns and explosions to personnel.
1. What safety rules did the 23 year old research assistant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) not follow?
2. What safety rule did Professor Karen Wetterhan not follow while completing experiments at Dartmouth College?
3. What safety rules did the two graduate students at Texas Tech University not follow?
I think Chubbyemu covered the Dartmouth Accident in a video.
Let's crush some explosives yey
I would have thought you would keep something like tert-Butyllithium, under nitrogen...
wouldn't argon be better as a heavier-than-air compound? I mean, I would think nitrogen would just flow away.
I'm not a chemist but I would presume you would need a sealed glove box (rather than a fume hood) to contain the nitrogen or whatever inert gas you would use to prevent combustion. Otherwise I could see someone inhaling a bit and potentially becoming hypoxic, judgement would probably slip leading to a higher risk of incident.
@@jds355 Nitrogen is commonly used when you deal compounds that are sensitive to air and water.
Shlenk lines are commonly used.
The containers for these sensitive organometallic compounds are have seals that prevent humidity and air from entering.
The solutions are also stored under nitrogen.
So when you need to take whatever volume you need, you use a syringe which you dried in an oven and you put a nitrogen ballon with a needle to maintain pressure or you use a nitrogen line with two needs to prevent overflow.
Sure, argon is safer and a glovebox is even more safe, but argon is more expensive than nitrogen and glovebox are very expensive, not everybody can afford them.
You're not a chemist and it shows.
One thing, I have a good point, Tbh, she forgot to put science suit and goggles before test, but, she did not pay attention
If they were concerned by batch to batch differences in the explosive, they could prepare it in small batches, mix with solvent and combine the batches at the end maybe.
Safety.
Your safety is on you. No one else is responsible for you getting back home in one piece at night.
How do you get that far in school; and not know to wear the proper PPE when working with highly reactive chemicals?
I’m saddened, surely Ms Sanjji. But it isn’t what “happened” to her; it’s what she did.
Things should be more stupid proof for this reason.
Btw, college is entirely useless in 99.99% of life.
Pulls plunger out the back of syringe holding pyrophiric chemical in a hood with an open container orf flammable solvent while not wearing any PPE….sounds like training issue. Her professor is to blame
Of course, people are stupid af. They don't READ, they don't COMPREHEND and they can't spell. They fail to follow instructions at every turn.
I had a job doing metal anodizing and got a small amount os Sulfuric Acid splashed on my face, luckilly it was only about 10 seconds to the wash stand but I'm lucky it wasn't worse, some minor surface burns with no lasting damage fortuatnely. Luckily battery acid is only about 30%
Severe burns are an absolutely horrible & agonising death!
OH&S training should be an absolute priority!
If you live, you'll have a good deal of pain until you die or something else.
Should have done it in a flame hood with a positive pressure inert atmosphere. Alot of people on here talk about oh well how stupid it was to do it, but you know this process of grinding explosive materials into smaller granules is a common practice, its also how you make black powder. You add water to the mixture though to prevent explosion.
There is a BIG difference between gunpowder and modern, primary explosives... The first one isn't even a "real" explosive as it will just burn quickly, but not detonate unless you put it in a confined space. Perchlorates (and other primary explosives) will explode and send pieces of whatever they where sitting on flying. So yeah, grinding 5g of primary explosives is just as stupid as everyone else is saying... When it goes off, your hand will probably either just disintegrate or be filled with the fragments of your mortar.
Now to the "When": If a "close relative" of the substance you are working with (NHN) has a friction sensitivity of 16 N (when grinding it with a pestle), it is a rather stupid idea to put it anywhere near a mortar as you will exceed this force quite easily. So: The idea of grinding it was extremely dumb, as is any idea of grinding a new explosive substance for which no datasheets exist.
And yes, no one knew if that new compound would be explosive, but if you are combining two known explosives (Nickel hydrazine and a perchlorate) it's a good idea to handle it like it IS in fact explosive.
Oh, and just to add to your misunderstanding/lack of knowledge: It would have exploded under an inert atmosphere since it already had the oxygen needed to decompose (explode) in form of the perchlorate (a Chlorine atom with four(!!) oxygen atoms attached to it). Nearly every explosive substances (if not all) have their own oxygen needed for decomposition as it would take to long to get oxygen out of the air, thereby slowing down the explosion and making it "just" highly flammable.
@@eulemitbeule5426 oxygen is one of the most reactive things known. its what gives acids there power virtually all acids contain oxygen.
ammonium nitrate is fairly safe to handle and will simply burn vigorously if ignited unless its mixed with fuel and contained. on its own its a strong oxidiser. ammonia it self is flammable the main danger though is its highly toxic and corrosive.
there was a incident a few yrs back involving a truck rollover and ammonium nitrate when they tried to extinguish the fire it exploded. had they just spread it out and let it burn itself out it probably wouldnt have detonated. it completely destroyed a fire truck 2 cop cars and a rail bridge that was near by.
@@chrisforgan731 Ammonium nitrate is believed to build up pressure when smoldering in a piled up condition, as was the case in West, TX and Beirut, Lebanon. As the AN gets hot, it becomes less stable, and that can be very dangerous.
Remember, that for explosion, your fire also needs confinement and pressure. A trailer load of AN can rapidly build up to an explosive condition when burning.
Very early irrigation / deluge with copius amounts of water will dissolve and disperse the fuel supply. In addition to the heat removed by evaporation of the fire fighting water, dissolving ammonium nitrate is endothermic, and chills its surroundings.
That said, there are frequently conditions where the fire is already too energetic, and the AN thus is too unstable to approach, and then the proper method is to pull back to a safe distance and let it burn / explode.
“Safety must be the the primary concern of all laboratories”
University of Chicago in the 40s: uhhhhhhh
My University 2021: Uhhhhh
They should have had enclosed chambers with gloves in holes to work with the chemical, and the chamber should have been filled with something like pure nitrogen or argon.
It was a perchorate, so it contained its own oxidizer. I doubt an intert gas atmosphere would have made any difference.
@@russlehman2070 he was referring to the indian girl who handled pyrochemical that was exposed to oxygen
@@greyfox3755 yep, though if you read anything from experienced chemists you'll know the procedure she was using is pretty standard, the lack of safety equipment not so much.
@@darthkarl99 I think that I can guess why. The money that funds the research is fiat currency. So, the students are under pressure to perform under substandard conditions to cut costs. We should blame the bank notes.
@@henryng439 When i say experienced chemists i'm including industrial chemists and the like working in company, not academic labs.
From what i've read short of somthing chatastrophic like the plunger failure it fairly safe as the amount you can squeeze out through the needle end will generally burn up before it can set anything on fire. It takes a very large spill or direct application to fairly flammable material to get it to start a fire.
The situation that occurred is about as bad as a spill of it can get in terms of ability to set things on fire, proper protective clothing and proper safety precautions like removing nearby solvents makes even that a relatively mild accident.
Improper personal protection equipment, handling highly unstable chemicals required stringent safety protocols, including a fire watch ,flame retardant clothing
We just realized we have no fire extinguishers in the same room as our tissue processor which has xylene and methanol in it… along with all the stains.
would like to ask some questions about the solutions by apply all the hierarchy of control to prevent similar accidents in future of Texas Tech Lessons that happened on 7 January 2010.
Thank you
This documentary is ridiculous, completely preventable.
7:56
chubbyemu stans wya
I love doing lab experiments in my fuzzy sweaters. Scary to think I've been risking my life.
Every business or program SHOULD REQUIRE SPECFIC PROTOCOLS OF PROCEDURES TO PROMOTE STRONGER SAFETY STANDARDS FOR WORKERS and STUDENT INTERNS...
One of the better videos, but like the instructionals for physical safety that are recommended herein, there should be highlights throughout the video for untrained listeners for when they might be listening to bullshit. My warning alerts sounded a few times.
"He suffered inquires to other parts of his body".
I think that is the polite way to say he blew his Johnson off.
Karen and the mercury compound were featured in another channels video by Chubbyemu-
"Description
I make medical videos, telling stories in medicine. These are variations on cases I, or my colleagues, have seen in the past. The main goal of these videos are to tell a story about people, as we each have a unique story to tell."
The SDS sheet the chemical co provided saying to use latex gloves was accurate, but you DO have to buy QUALITY gloves and only use them ONCE, I suspect karen either had cheap ones supplied by the University, or she took them off more than once and re-used them.
I cant imagine why anyone would feel the need to mess with dimethylmercury in the first place!
Yeah there's always gnna be a risk... New compounds, New students it's the literally the place that mistakes happen.
In experiments sometimes things just go wrong and you have to be prepared for any eventuality. One of our science teachers recalled an incident when she was preparing the test where you put Lithium, Sodium and Potassium in a large bowl with some water, she was testing it out when she was back blown into a cupboard. Must have been a dodgy batch of one of the metals.
Wearing a synthetic sweater...
Sorry..
I've only spoken English for about 55 years but does that mean this person wasnt wearing proper lab gear and, in fact promoted the incident with the clothes she was wearing?
Doesnt that sound negligent?
Like she was to blame?
Too honest?
So many questions.
Dont be messing with explosive materials without safety gear. Any idiot knows this. She should've had the common sense to wear some protection
You mean "sense." Common sense is not common.
In the third incident...it might have been wise to call Dr. Thomas Kläpotke in Munich or Dr. Jean'nee Shreeve at the University of Idaho and pose this question: "We're thinking of making a ten-gram batch of nickel hydrazine perchlorate; do you have any safety recommendations?" The "recommendation" would most likely have been "don't do that."
"How should we break up the lumps in our 10-gram sample of nickel hydrazine perchlorate?"
"Place the sample in a ball mill and move back before turning it on."
"How far should we move back?"
"Tennessee should be fine."
This is what happens when chemistry classes main focus is math and equations rather than proper lab techniques
100% the fault of the PI and the Chemistry Dept. safety officer. But as usual no one will be held accountable, and we'll keep reading about completely preventable episodes like this. In the US, because our official religion is the love of money above all else, you have to be your own first responder, no one is looking out for you despite all of the propaganda otherwise. Act accordingly.
What about when they handle pyrophoric chems use syringes that the plungers don’t come out of. Or like how they have the pre measured pipettes. 🤷♂️
For larger than 5-10 mL of something like tBuLi she should have cannulated it into a flame-dried graduated cylinder under nitrogen then cannulated it into her reaction. That was standard procedure in my graduate lab.
Death by dimethymercury is hideous. The professor's death was tragic.