With the support of an ACS Innovative Project Grant, the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety is partnering with the Division of Chemical Information and ACS Safety Advisory Panel to develop teaching resources to help students in undergraduate organic teaching labs develop hazard identification and risk assessment skills appropriate to their work in the lab. To help us with this work, we developed a survey about organic chemistry laboratory courses taught at the undergraduate level.
With the help of the DCHAS-L e-mail list, we were able to get thoughts from 63 people about the most important organic teaching laboratory exercises to consider in our work as well as some general information about safety practices they employ in this setting.
You can review the detailed results of this survey here:
We’d also appreciate it if you would share with us information about a question we forgot to ask in the first survey: What are your requirements for PPE in the organic teaching lab?
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If you would like to share any thoughts on this work, please send them to Ralph Stuart at membership@dchas.org
Not saying anything is necessarily wrong…but the header picture looks really weird due to the disparity of PPE worn by the personnel pictured.
Lab coats vs no lab coats
Safety glasses vs goggles
Which is it?
Your observations are one reason we’re asking this question. In addition to the ergonomic challenges for the individuals wearing PPE, monitoring the use of lab coats, goggles, safety glasses, gloves, etc is a significant challenge for people teaching the lab class. Balancing these factors with the protective value of the PPE and the potential exposure scenarios in a teaching lab is an ongoing question.
Thanks for raising an important question.
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
membership@dchas.org
Membership chair
American Chemical Society
Division of Chemical Health and Safety
A responder to the survey asks their colleagues:
For those with lab coat programs, :
1. do the students purchase, keep and wash on their own at home or in the dorm?
2. does the university provide coats
3. does an outside uniform service like Cintas provide and launder coats
My experinence is that this will vary from institution to institution and department to department, depending on the type of chemistry involved and the history of the department’s experience with student concerns.
– Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
membership@dchas.org
Membership chair
American Chemical Society
Division of Chemical Health and Safety
Do you know if the 63 responses were each from a different school?
Yes, in general, the replies came from different schools.