The Lab Panic Button
by
Sitting in driver’s education class as a 15-year-old one hot summer day, two things stuck with me: 1) the idea that when driving, we should always leave ourselves an “out,” and 2) the horrific smell generated by a room full of teenagers, still struggling with the concept of deodorant.
We were taught that when driving we should constantly anticipate what could go wrong. If the guy on the cell phone in the car to the right of us starts drifting over, is there room for us to move left? If the couch hanging off the pick-up in front of us falls off, are we far enough back to avoid it? If they play one more Miley Cyrus song on the radio, is there a tree nearby to drive into?
Nowhere is anticipation more important than in lab.
In setting up experiments, it’s critically important to have the panic button nearby. It’s the emergency response that you’ve made second-nature – the one that will be kicked into gear automatically when the button is pushed.
At the moment when things go wrong in lab, there can be a feeling of complete and utter panic. Alarm bells go off in our heads and our brain screams “RRRRUUUUUUNNNN!!!!!” In emergency situations, panic is the enemy. Having a plan is absolutely essential to ensuring the safety of everyone around us. Before starting an experiment, we should know whether there are any compatibility issues between the reagents we’re using. Then we can imagine the absolute worst-case scenario happening while performing the experiment and think of how we would respond. In addition to reading the MSDS (which we should always do) it’s important to visualize how our response would actually take place.
The great thing is that once we’ve done this a few times, the response will become second nature and moments when things don’t go as planned will be calm and controlled, as they should be. A lab emergency is one of those things you never hope you see, but careful preparation will make sure everyone escapes unscathed.
joanne
wrote on September 2, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I think it's also important to take responsibilty to become informed about the safety of reagents yourself (ie reading the MSDS) rather than relying on hand-me-down info. I've worked in situations where people will do things and assume things based on what someone has told them, or what has always been done in the lab. This can be dangerous and just plain wrong sometimes. Maybe this is an obvious point though…. but do the research yourself.
Dangerous Bill
wrote on December 2, 2010 at 12:56 pm
In another forum, I was dismayed to see that the 'cowboy chemist' ethic still persists, in spite of changes in safety regulations and well-publicized lab accidents. When I asked a class of senior chemists and chemical engineering students some elementary questions about fire and chemical safety, only about half had the slightest notion what I was talking about, and a percentage thought the whole thing was a joke.
I don't take a prescribed drug until I've examined the literature myself, and I don't handle a chemical or piece of apparatus until I know everything about it. Even so, the unforeseen can pop up anytime. For example:
A vacuum pump was used for years to pump traces of nitric oxide from a chamber. Eventually the tubing had to be replaced, and the pump was left running, pumping room air. When I walked in, great billows of red NO2 were rolling from the pump exhaust, as the large volumes of air stripped the accumulated, oxidized NO from the pump oil. The people were still working on the pump, and annoyed when I cleared the lab.
alan@benchfly
wrote on December 3, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Completely agree- all it takes is one accident to show you how quickly a reaction/experiment can go from completely under control to totally out of control. And like many of the well-publicized lab accidents, sometimes you don't get a second chance.