Safety and Laboratory Practice

Although laboratories are potentially dangerous places, the records of accidents that occur show that the number of serious injuries is relatively low. In schools, the gymnasium and workshops have more accidents, and more injuries occur in corridors than in laboratories. However, science technicians are often called on to give assistance and, considering the hazards in laboratories, they should obviously be capable of dealing with the more likely incidents.

The coming of commercially distributed electricity has been one of the greatest benefits to modern society. Every laboratory in the country has a large number of electrically powered devices. Used carefully, electricity not only relieves the mechanical drudgery of many tasks but is indeed the very thing that makes many operations possible. Used carelessly, electricity can kill, not only through electric shock, but by causing fires. Frequently it is other people who suffer from an individual’s carelessness. All technicians, no matter in what discipline they work, will be called on to use a variety of electrically powered equipment, and it is essential that they learn the fundamentals of safe working. Failure to do so makes them a danger, not only to themselves, but to the lives of others.

Fire damage is now a very expensive matter as well as being one direct cause of injury and death. During 1975, for example, the cost of fire damage in the United Kingdom has been estimated at more than £4 for every man, woman and child in the population. It is therefore very important to do everything possible to reduce the risk of fire, especially in the high-risk areas such as laboratories.

The system of law in England, and in many other countries whose legal systems are based on the English system, has two main sources: case law and statute law. Case law, which may be described as judge-made law, is the source of the general rights to liberty and justice, and has developed over the centuries as judges have been called upon to decide what was fair in particular circumstances. As society has become more complex, it has become increasingly necessary to formalise and to change the rules of what is fair and to define limits on the rights and duties of individuals and organisations, and to spell out these rights and duties in a statute, or Act of Parliament. A recent example of this change is the Health and Safety at Work, etc., Act, 1974 which states, among other things, the duty of working safely to avoid harm to others, which supplements the common law * duty to show reasonable care for others.

Chemistry laboratories can be the most dangerous places, but if one is aware of the dangers and potential hazards that can and do exist, the laboratory will be no more dangerous than the average work place.

Physics laboratories are often considered to be less dangerous than some others such as chemistry laboratories. It is true that the hazards are less obvious but none the less real and ever present. As in most laboratories many risks can be minimised by taking care and giving thought to the possible dangers inherent in any specific situation. It is important always to remember that although one individual who has set up a particular experimental situation may be aware of the dangers associated with it, for example, exposed HT terminals or a laser beam, this individual may be called away at any time leaving what amounts to a booby trap for the next worker who comes into that laboratory. The only safe way to work in a laboratory is to bear in mind, at all times, the possibility of having to leave the room and another worker, or in some cases, member of the public, coming into that room — is that person at risk? If the answer is yes then your experimental arrangement must be modified to make it safe.

Biology laboratories may contain a wider range of hazards than any other laboratory. A well-equipped laboratory will frequently contain much electrical instrumentation and will certainly possess a wide variety of chemicals. It is therefore important to read chapters 5 and 6 on hazards in chemistry and physics laboratories first; the contents of this chapter explain additional hazards.

Whenever a measurement is made and the result noted, it is important that a realistic estimate of the accuracy of that measurement is also recorded. In general terms, if a measurement to a high degree of accuracy is required, it takes a long time to make and often requires expensive and delicate equipment. In many situations a very high degree of accuracy is unnecessary and a measurement may be taken more quickly, easily and cheaply but it is essential to indicate what degree of accuracy was aimed for. If you do not, there is a real danger that at some time in the future, someone may assume that your rough approximation was an accurate result, and, basing some calculation on this misconception, claim some result that is quite unjustified.

In our study of science, we try to make measurements and use these measurements to help us gain an understanding of the real world. In everyday life, we frequently have to make estimates of times, distances, etc., to decide, for example, whether we can catch up and board a moving bus, or whether the car that we are driving will (or will not) pass through the available gap. Usually these estimates are correct; on the other hand, if people are asked to state the height of someone they have witnessed, or state distances after a road accident, the values estimated are usually wildly inaccurate.