ChemBark

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.

Photo credit: Mark E. Brady, PGFD

Earlier this week, something went wrong in the sophomore orgo lab (CHEM 242 class) at the University of Maryland, and two students were injured in an explosion+fire. The details (and pictures) were almost immediately posted to the PG County Fire Department’s Web site.

The fire department announced that the cause of the accident was the addition of a nitric/sulfuric acid mixture into an (organic?) waste container. Jyllian Kemsley^[1] of C&EN interviewed UMD chemistry department chairman Michael Doyle, who had a slightly different story. He believes the accident was the result of adding the nitric acid to a bottle with an organic reagent in it (not necessarily a waste container).

Mitch has raised this issue before, but it is worth repeating…If you are teaching orgo lab and your students are using nitric acid in high concentrations, you must Must MUST tell them to be careful that the HNO₃ does not come into contact with the acetone or other oxidizable solvents you’ve given them to wash their glassware. You had also better label the organic waste bottles that day with a warning that adding HNO₃ will cause the bottle to explode.

[1] Incidentally, I am a huge Jyllian Kemsley fan. C&EN‘s safety beat writer has done a phenomenal job covering safety issues in academic research, including the tragic case of Sheri Sangji at UCLA and the jaw-dropping idiocy of Preston Brown at Texas Tech. Kemsley runs a blog, the Safety Zone, on C&EN‘s Web site. It is the place to go for news pertinent to chemical safety.

Should the practice of working alone in lab be treated as anathema?  You’d think so after reading through the comment threads regarding this weekend’s accident at Boston College.

She was working alone, you say?!  Crikey!  How could this possibly be allowed to happen?!  I am outraged!!

People in academic chemistry labs work alone all the time.  While this observation by itself does not mean the practice is a good idea, it does make me wonder why so many of you seem so surprised.

Well, Paul…putting aside the fact that the practice is common, do you think working alone in lab is a bad idea?

The question seems strange when worded like that, so I’ll take the scenic route in answering it.  I think the practice of working alone in lab is similar to driving your car in the rain.  While I’d prefer not to have to drive in the rain, if I choose to stay home, nothing is going to get done.  And while bad weather can exacerbate an accident, I would not label driving in the rain as inherently “unsafe”.  If it is raining outside when you need to go somewhere, chances are you are going to drive in the rain and get on with your life.  If no one is around your lab when you want to work, chances are you are going to keep working.   

There might be another valid analogy with personal protective equipment.  Insisting that people work in groups might be considered akin to insisting that everyone work in bunny suits.  Are you safer working in a bunny suit?  Perhaps, but it can definitely be a hassle for the (little?) value it adds to your general safety.

The major risk of working alone is simple: should an accident occur in which one person becomes incapacitated or in need of assistance, no one else will be present to help.  This is a valid criticism and I think it is never a bad idea to have people around.  While I understand the reasoning behind not wanting researchers to experiment alone in lab, I do not endorse the wholesale idea that the practice should be banned.

I’ve got no major problem with working alone, so long as the person doing so uses good judgment in deciding what type of work is reasonable in these situations.  When alone, it is prudent to limit yourself to experiments that don’t require especially hazardous reagents, dangerous conditions, or large scales.  That said, I don’t think there are any black-and-white rules you can institute.  Experience should also enter the analysis; you don’t want to try something dodgy for the first time when you are alone.

There are a bunch of other questions that can arise with respect to any outright ban of working alone.  First off, what counts as “alone”?  The institutional policies I’ve come across aren’t specific.  Must the researchers working be located in the same bay?  The same room?  Same floor?  Same building?

And what if your companion goes to his office to check e-mail?  Or down the hall to use the restroom?  Should work then stop?  For what duration can a person be left alone before she has to stop working?  Need the companion be a chemist, or will anyone suffice?

Also, what is considered “working”?  If I am pulling data from a computer in the lab, need someone else be present?  What if I am collecting an NMR spectrum?  Should someone else be in the room with me?

I don’t have good answers to these questions, but again, I really don’t care too much because it doesn’t change my bottom line.  What do I care if someone is running a routine dump-and-stir reaction on a Sunday morning?  The lion-share of the risk is being assumed by the researcher who has made a conscious decision to work alone, and I think that risk is minimal and reasonable in most situations.  Again, the use of particularly nasty reagents or conditions is a different story, because there is added potential for injury and damage beyond the person who is working alone. 

All of this said, the situation can boil down to a black-and-white issue in that I believe researchers should be obligated to abide by the rules of their institutions.  If your advisor, school, or company bans working alone, you shouldn’t.  It’s that simple.  If you don’t know what “counts” as working alone, you ask before trying anything.

Given the comments over the past week, I expect a lot of you to disagree.  Fire away…

Updated…

There was a “small blast” in the Merkert Chemistry Center on the campus of Boston College today.  From the Boston Globe / Associated Press:

BOSTON—A Boston College doctoral student suffered minor injuries at a lab Saturday when a chemical used in making mustard gas and methamphetamine exploded in her hand, a school spokesman said.

Oh my God!  She might have been making mustard gas and meth?!  That’s crazy!

No, she was just using thionyl chloride.

Ugh.  Way to go, media.  How come your stories never start:

CHESTNUT HILL—A Boston College doctoral student suffered minor injuries at a lab Saturday when a chemical used in the synthesis and discovery of drugs to fight ghastly human diseases exploded in her hand, a school spokesman said.

Even though the student all but certainly wasn’t up to nefarious activity, it appears that her actions were not above reproach.  The accident was discovered by labmates after the student left the scene and went home without telling anyone.  If the “blast” wasn’t a big deal and didn’t hurt her significantly, she should have taken care of cleaning it up.  If she was hurt, she should have reported it and sought treatment.

The story says she received cuts to her face and minor burns on her hands.  If true, it probably wasn’t a good idea to leave campus and drive herself home.

(H/T to the Speedster at Harvard)

Updates / Other Thoughts

The Boston Herald has a story and, it appears, a photo of the injured student

The comment threads for these stories are depressing.  Many readers are expressing serious concern that this was a meth lab or that she was making nerve agents.  Relax, people.  Thionyl chloride is used all the time by synthetic organic chemists to add chlorine atoms to their molecules.   These students are probably in training to spend their lives trying to discover pharmaceuticals for the treatment of disease.  They’re not bad people, but minor accidents do happen (on rare occasion).

The Boston CBS affilitate is reporting the name of the student as Hee Yeon Cho.  She won an ACS Organic Divison Fellowship in 2010.  Relax, everyone…the Scott and Morken groups are not meth labs.

A labmate writes on Facebook:

This was such a disaster on so many levels… It’s been one hell of a day. Why she left we still have no idea but walking into a lab with glass, blood, a demolished hood and a missing person this morning was enough for me

There’s a video from WBZ.  And another from WCVB.  These videos make it clear that her flight from the scene really exacerbated the situation.

Also, everyone is saying a “beaker” exploded.  I can’t imagine it was actually a beaker.