Potential Chemical Hazards in the Science Department

Chemicals are the tools of science teaching, and every one of them can hurt someone. Responsible chemical management is a set of habits, and the first word in all of them is safer. You cannot make the room safe. You can bring the chance of an accident down.

Start with the chemical hygiene plan. If you teach in a laboratory, you must have one, it must be current, and current means reviewed every year. It names the controls, the protective equipment, the training, the prior-approval process, and who is responsible. Every member of the department has access to it, and the chemical hygiene officer manages it.

Training comes before the chemicals. It is a legal requirement every year, on hire, on a new assignment, when the plan changes and when a new hazardous chemical arrives. Thirty-five percent of STEM and CTE teachers have never had formal safety training, and formal training cuts accidents by about half.

Now take a look at this storeroom. The acid cabinet is sitting on top of the flammable cabinet, which is not secure and puts incompatibles together. The pair of them are blocking a doorway, and you never block a doorway. On top of the acid cabinet a cardboard box is balanced half in the air. Labels are missing from some of the bottles. And there is clutter everywhere, which fails the OSHA housekeeping standard. You may inherit a room like this from somebody who was there for forty years. Do not work in it and do not create it, because somebody, probably you, is going to get hurt, and the vapors you cannot see count as much as the mess you can.

Here is another view of the same room. On the far right, second shelf from the bottom, something is growing on a bottle. Those are crystals, and that bottle is telling you to get it out of the building. You do not touch it yourself. Containers are stacked one on top of another, which is not how you store. And there are no dates on these bottles. Some chemicals get cranky with age, and bottles like these have exploded in people's hands. The shelves do have lips, which is one good thing. If you knew the room was unsafe and left it that way, that is not negligent. That is reckless.

Then the inventory. Every time a chemical arrives, it goes into the inventory that day, with its date. An inventory nobody has touched in five years is not an inventory. Anything past its shelf life is disposed of by the procedure in its Safety Data Sheet and the plan, and a broken lid or a damaged bottle is dealt with immediately, not next week.

Here is what a storeroom should look like. Clear plexiglass lips on every shelf, made in the school's own CTE shop, so nothing can walk off the edge. Labeled bottles, nothing stacked, and room to see every one.

Most storerooms hold far more than they use, often three hundred bottles and sometimes a thousand. About seventy-five chemicals will run a strong program, with fifteen or twenty used often, and an advanced course may need a few more. Put a colored dot on a bottle each time it is used, and after a year you can see what never moves.

Storage is where the hazards hide. Not alphabetical. Chemicals are stored by compatibility: acids in an acid cabinet, flammables in a flammable cabinet, oxidizers away from flammables, organic acids away from inorganic bases, sulfides and cyanides away from acids. Reactive metals go under mineral oil in the flammable cabinet, and a flammable lecture cylinder gets a flammable cabinet of its own. Nothing heavy or concentrated on a top shelf. Concentrated hydrochloric acid filed under H on the shelf by the ceiling is taking your life in your hands.

Labels and Safety Data Sheets. Every chemical has a label and a sheet, including the solution you diluted this morning and the dropper bottle on the bench. Safety Data Sheets are kept for thirty years, and the old sheets stay in the file.

Waste is the end of the cycle you should have planned at purchase. Keep it separate from working stock, label it with the name, the concentration and the date, write unknown when that is the truth, and tell the chemical hygiene officer in writing.

Buy the smallest amount that does the job, consolidate orders across the department, make sure there is a cabinet and the ventilation for what you order, and have the chemical hygiene officer approve the purchase. Twenty gallons of methanol in a middle school is a bonus budget year gone wrong. Never accept a donation of chemicals. Whoever holds them owns the problem.

Protective equipment is for every person in the room, through setup, the hands-on work and the takedown. Indirectly vented chemical splash goggles for liquid hazards, safety glasses only for physical hazards, nitrile gloves, non-latex aprons, all in sizes that fit. The rule that works: when the teacher's goggles come off, the students' can come off.

When something goes wrong, the Safety Data Sheet is the procedure. Section four is first aid. Section five is firefighting. Section six is a spill. Section seven is handling and storage. Section eight is protective equipment. If a fire is bigger than an extinguisher, leave it and get out alive.

Three questions came in from the audience. First: we have three hundred chemicals. Do they all need a GHS label? Yes. Every chemical carries the appropriate Globally Harmonized System label. Bottles bought before the 2016 changeover are grandfathered by OSHA, but the moment you buy a new one or make a solution on site, that container gets a GHS label. Some jurisdictions want every bottle relabeled for consistency, and that is a better professional practice on top of the legal minimum.

Second: I found radioactive samples in my prep room. What should I do? Do not handle them. Every state has a radiological officer, in the department of health or the department of labor. Contact that office and invite them in as soon as possible. They will measure what you have and help you get rid of it. Old samples can still be active, and rocks collected as paperweights have turned out to be uranium ore. Never collect rocks you cannot identify.

Third: I found a box of seven old mercury thermometers. How do we dispose of them safely? If none are broken, contract a licensed hazardous waste company. It is worth the money. Until they are collected, pack them well and lock them where no student or teacher can reach them, and tell the chemical hygiene officer in writing. If one is broken, in some states a few teaspoons of mercury means evacuating the school and calling the fire department. Do not go solo.

Responsible chemical management: planned, stored, labeled, used and disposed of, safer every time.