ChemBark

It’s time for another edition of WWWTP?, which in this case, could just as easily stand for “What’s Wrong with these People?”

This image was kindly forwarded to ChemBark by a concerned reader and patron of Phenomenex. The company ships their products in these sexually suggestive cardboard boxes. The innuendo would make sense and qualify as mildly clever double entendre if the company dealt with genomics, but Phenomenex sells chromatography supplies. I guess someone thought they had a good idea and decided to roll with it:

Inside the box, a colorful brochure contained less disguised innuendo: the words “unzip me” and what appears to be anthropomorphic female genitalia with legs and a cane. Closer inspection of the Phenomenex Web site reveals that these characters are based on an astonishingly yonic logo for Kinetex (R), the company’s core-shell adsorbent materials for chromatography. Hmmm.

I feel it necessary to warn any of you who might be (i) charged with purchasing HPLC supplies and (ii) perverted, that I hear the customer service at Phenomenex is awful.

Just like there is large subset of the Christian population that proclaims faith to be of deep personal importance but rarely finds time to attend weekly church services, there is a large contingent in academic chemistry that proclaims safety as the “top priority” but rarely finds time to participate in proper training. Where there are Christians who only make it to church once a year for Easter services, there are chemists who only bother with training during a 30-min annual refresher course. And just how calamitous personal events (e.g., life-threatening medical diagnoses) are often the only effective means of driving people to experience meaningful spiritual rebirth, it usually takes a tragic event to befall a chemist for an academic department to change the way it approaches safety.

In matters where science and religion clash, I will always side with science, but let’s not pretend scientists are immune to the hypocrisy of compromising their core values out of apathy or laziness. For the slogan “safety first” to carry any weight, it must be backed with action. Such action is generally missing from academic labs, where the slogans “papers first” or “money first” would probably be more suitable. If safety truly ranked first, we would spend more time on it than a few perfunctory lab inspections scattered around an annual refresher course.

If the importance of safety is genuinely held in such high regard—nobody will openly assert that safety is unimportant—then why aren’t training and compliance a bigger deal in academia? Sadly, the laxity of safety is so ingrained in our culture that the deficient system is perceived as normal. It wasn’t too long ago that R.B. Woodward proudly posed for photographs while smoking in his laboratory. In order to achieve meaningful improvement, someone is going to have to counteract this tremendous inertia and change the system.

There is probably a reluctance on the part of professors to institute any significant change because it will “eat up” valuable time. Every minute spent on safety training is a minute not spent running experiments. This fact I will concede, but there is one grand tradition of academic chemistry that manages to weather this criticism: the weekly group meeting. Practically every research group in the world abandons the lab to discuss their experimental results on a weekly basis. A significant fraction of these groups also invest time formally reviewing papers from the recent literature. The tacit implication of holding these meetings is clear: (i) results are important and (ii) keeping up with the literature is important. I see no reason why safety training should not be incorporated into weekly group meetings to emphasize that safety is also important.

How would such a plan be implemented? Professors could either devote an entire meeting (at some regular interval) to safety, or they could make safety a small part of every meeting. For instance, each time a student presents her research results, she could also include one slide devoted to safety. The lesson could deal with a hazard related to one of her experiments, or it could be something more general. The weekly emphasis on safety will help to reinforce the material by repetition and build a perceivable commitment to safety. From the standpoint of risk management, an ancillary benefit of having formal presentations is the creation of a paper trail (i.e., slides) that affirms training is conducted regularly.

The death of Sheri Sangji could have sparked a born-again devotion to safety in academia, but unfortunately, the progress seems largely limited to UCLA. Three years removed from Sangji’s death, many of the circumstances that led to her demise are still common problems in academic chemistry: there are many lab workers who don’t know when to use a cannula or that being contaminated with a pyrophoric material does not mean you must avoid the safety shower.  There are still people who fail to wear lab coats when working with nasty reagents—or who use lab coats made of polyester or cotton in blissful ignorance of their flammability. As with Sheri Sangji’s death, the news of the draconian charges leveled against Patrick Harran represents another opportunity for we, as chemists, to reassess our values and how we conduct research. While weaving safety into the “traditional” group meeting will not replace the need for hands-on training or enforcement of compliance, even if only in small amounts, it will be beneficial for safety to be included within this sacrosanct ritual. For any value to take hold, it must be practiced religiously.

Jyllian Kemsley has a post that summarizes all of the coverage and commentary on the UCLA/Harran news. Her blog is undoubtedly the best place to follow developments in this story. The case has so many component issues that one could easily write 20,000 words and still not feel the subject has been properly analyzed. Instead of doing that, let me start off with some preliminary thoughts:

I am not a lawyer. I am almost completely unfamiliar with California labor law and OSHA requirements for how employers must ensure safe laboratory conditions for their employees. Harran may have broken the law; he may not have. I can’t render a reliable opinion of his prospective guilt with regard to the charges.

Severity of charges. While I’m not a lawyer, I think I’m entitled to a loose opinion of what makes sense in this case. The idea that Harran faces up to 4.5 years in prison seems excessive to me, especially when you consider that Harran probably oversaw the safety of his lab in a manner typical of most top-flight professors. Is the state of California going to attempt to imprison every professor whose students don’t wear lab coats, or just the professors who happen to be at the helm when an accidental death occurs?

Punishment. While I believe that a prison term would not be warranted for a conviction in this case, there must be some serious punishment for failing to maintain a safe laboratory work environment. Lack of holding management responsible for running unsafe labs is probably one major reason the culture of academic safety is broken. For the most part, states have left schools to police themselves with regard to safety, and guess what…schools (id est, faculties…id est, professors) don’t impose any meaningful punishments on themselves. With respect to Harran, I think the charges should be “wobbled” down to misdemeanors that can draw smaller fines (in the thousands, not millions) and a shorter suspended sentence (if Harran is convicted). The (seemingly) most appropriate and meaningful punishment for a manager/PI who runs an unsafe lab is termination. While I don’t think a court could force the university to fire a professor, if the university retains a PI known for running an unsafe lab, it is sending a rotten message. At present, UCLA seems to be standing by Harran.

Prospective jurors won’t be chemists. Most of us have worked around academic labs for several years and are familiar with the element of laxity in these environments. While we accept this culture as normal, I think it will be easy for an experienced lawyer to highlight some of the aspects of life in an academic lab in a way that members of the public (including jurors) will find appalling.

Nonsensical laws. I lack the experience of a lawyer or legislator, but there are certain aspects of the law that seem silly to me. For instance, Sheri was a lab tech, and apparently, the law treats lab techs differently from grad students. Here, Sheri was doing the exact same type of work as a grad student. This disparity doesn’t make any sense to me and just illustrates that academic scientists have not been very effective at lobbying to change silly laws. You see it all the time in safety. Why does 1 gallon of isopropanol/KOH in a 5-gallon container “count” as 5 gallons of flammable solvent during fire inspections (against a 10-gallon-per-room limit)? The 1 gallon is “safer” to use in a 5-gallon container than a 1-gallon container (i.e., no splashing out of the bucket). Also, why can’t safety showers be hooked into the drainage system of a building? What, exactly, is being protected there?

Who gets the blame when everyone is to blame? This case seems headed for a tort, which means that someone is going to have to figure out how to apportion blame for Sangji’s death. While it looks like Harran didn’t have his responsibilities under control, neither did Sangji. It was her responsibility to wear a lab coat (assuming one was available), and my feeling is that even though she wasn’t a Ph.D. chemist, she most likely knew that she was working with a dangerous material in an iffy way (3 x full syringe vs. cannula). Sheri paid the ultimate price for her negligence. Now, how much will UCLA and Harran have to pay (if anything)? I have no idea how one begins to address this issue quantitatively.

Will this case result in constructive change? The culture of safety in academic labs is broken. The tragic accident that occurred at UCLA could have easily happened at hundreds of other schools around the country, because the extent to which lab workers are trained—and monitored for compliance—in academia is a joke. My dissatisfaction centers on two main issues: (i) the actual safety knowledge of lab workers in academia is poor and (ii) safety programs at universities seem focused on limiting liability rather than actually improving worker safety. I imagine there are a few exceptional departments in the United States, but I challenge anyone to mount a tenable argument against this assessment. I really don’t see the Harran charges doing much to improve the first point, and I think the second issue will be severely exacerbated by this case. It would be nice if safety officers at schools could focus more on actually training students than devising vapid PowerPoint slides that “cover all the bases”.

In a news story that is very likely to have serious repercussions for those who work in academic labs, Los Angeles County charged UCLA’s Patrick Harran and the school’s regents with multiple counts of felony crimes stemming from the death of Sheri Sangji in an accident involving t-butyl lithium in 2008. A warrant has been issued for Harran’s arrest, and if convicted, he faces up to four and a half years in prison.

For those of you not familiar with the accident, you can find comprehensive coverage of it in C&EN from Jyllian Kemsley here and in the links on the right sidebar of that page. The accident had already influenced standard operating procedures at Caltech, where the use of lab coats in chemistry labs was emphasized as mandatory in the wake of Sangji’s death. She was not wearing a coat or alternative PPE garment when the accident occurred. Now that her professor must answer to felony charges of “failing to correct unsafe work conditions in a timely manner, to require clothing appropriate for the work being done and to provide proper chemical safety training,” you’d better believe that the faculties of other schools are going to take notice. While Harran will almost certainly never spend 4.5 years behind bars, the fact that it is even a possibility is going to have everyone scrambling in CYA mode.

UCLA responded that it was baffled by yesterday’s accusations, since a California/OSHA investigation found no willful safety violations on the part of the school. By my calculation, the severity of the charges is almost certainly a tactic by the County to scare UCLA and Harran into a plea bargain/settlement. That said, one wonders if this is the shot in the arm that finally forces academia to take safety seriously. One also wonders what sort of chilling effect this will have on the freedom that grad students and postdocs are typically given to decide how they conduct experiments in the lab. I certainly don’t think that it is a bad idea for professors to become more involved in the operational aspects of their research, but one wonders how many of them will overcompensate and stifle or frustrate workers in their laboratories. One might also wonder if professors that are (typically) decades removed from bench work will be useful in the capacity of safety officers.

Follow more discussion on Twitter: #SheriSangji via @Chemjobber

One overlooked aspect of the importance of wearing safety glasses in lab is the protection they afford to UV light. A report in today’s Harvard Crimson reminds us of this fact:

On Tuesday afternoon, about 60 LPSA students headed to Science Center 117 to complete the last lab of the semester, which involved observing DNA samples placed on a transilluminator that emitted ultraviolet light.

Although a protective shield is supposed to cover the device whenever students make observations, some students did not use the shield correctly while viewing their samples. Some were also not wearing safety goggles, resulting in temporary injury to their eyes that caused irritation and blurry vision a number of hours later, according to students in the course.

A number of students were sent to the hospital, although no one is expected to suffer permanent damage. This incident should serve as yet another reminder that you can’t get lazy about personal-protective equipment in lab just because “oh, we’re not working with fire or chemicals, so it should be okay”. Also, while it sucks to have to be the bad guy, when you are a TF (or TA, in non-Hahvahd speak), you must continually pester students who fail to wear their safety gear.

While almost all laboratory safety glasses sold nowadays have a UV-protective coating, one easy way to tell if yours do is to use your set-up for running TLCs. When you put your glasses in between your UV lamp and a fluorescent TLC plate, the fluorescent green color should go away.

Today’s edition of What’s Wrong with this Picture? was sent in by an astute reader from Atlanta:

I’ve been a reader for a while, and when I saw these doors and signs on all of the chemistry labs at the new Undergraduate Learning Commons at Georgia Tech today, I immediately thought of your blog.

Incidentally, the missing “T” in the first picture is not the answer (the theft of “T”s from campus signs is a tradition at Georgia Tech). The problem, of course, is the myriad of Texas carbons in these Lewis structures. While I love the H₂C= groups bonded directly to the benzene rings, what really gets me going are the triple bonds at the bridgeheads of the fused ring systems. Brilliant.

I think I’ll have to retire the WWWTP genre, because I can’t think of a worse place to post fakakta Lewis structures than the entrance of an orgo lab designed to teach undergrads to learn chemistry. This is the Sgt. Pepper’s of chemistry mistakes. Game over.