Remember the autoclave with which scientists sterilize instruments. Or a heat gun, which is used to dry dishes and heat distillation devices. It can also ignite fuel that is too close. Glass flasks explode in a vacuum, spattering splinters everywhere. The centrifuge breaks down, scattering chemical flasks throughout the laboratory. Steel vessels that store high-pressure liquids and gases per square inch explode, and metal fragments fly into employees. With all this, none of the above devices is as dangerous as what is in every laboratory on Earth: we.
When laboratory incidents result in death or serious injury, the person is to blame as always. Or usually a person. In 1997, Elizabeth Griffin, a 22-year-old primate researcher at Emory University, ended up without glasses when a macaque threw feces into her eyes. She died of herpes complications six weeks later. In 1996, chemistry professor Karen Vetterhan accidentally spilled some dimethyl mercury on her glove during a routine at Dartmouth College. Mercury seeped through the glove, and 10 months later, Karen died of poisoning. In 2009, the 23-year-old assistant of Shenarbano Sangha at the University of California did not put on a refractory lab coat and died of burns after a chemical reaction ignited his sweater.
While scientists are trying to create an artificial heart in the laboratory and transplant their heads, people are dying.
All these accidents, as you can see, have occurred with relatively young people. James Kaufman, president of the nonprofit Institute for Laboratory Safety, says the incidence rate in schools and colleges is 100 times higher than in the chemical industry. Although educational laboratories are far more dangerous, the exact number of cases is impossible to find out. The American Bureau of Labor Statistics records only accidents in professional laboratories. Therefore, if Dow, DuPont, and other chemical manufacturers comply with strict safety regulations, safety policies at universities and schools come to anecdotal violations. In addition, the schools are full of inexperienced chemists: students and schoolchildren. At Yale, Michel Dufault suffocated while working in a machine shop on the night of April 12, and only then were severe security measures taken. Left alone, the girl could not do anything when her hair was jammed with a lathe.
The routine tasks that killed Griffin, Wetterhan, Sangha, and Dufot are statistically more dangerous than the situation at supercolliders or at level 4 biohazards where you can't go without a spacesuit. One reason is the small number of people at risk. Another important point: the more dangerous the equipment in the laboratory, the more complex the security system. Researchers put on biosecurity suits and undergo a 7-minute sterilizing shower at Fort Detrick's Maryland lab. An automatic air supply system ensures that infected air with Ebola and Marburg viruses does not come to the surface. There are signs everywhere that remind you that the work takes place in a dangerous environment, so scientists never feel safe. Gigi Gronwall, an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh Biosafety Center, says that "the most dangerous thing is human error, and the most scrupulous laboratories are least affected by this."
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