Hi Ralph,

We have a summer youth program at Michigan Tech in the summer where high school students come in and do some hands-on lab experiences.

We do two things:

1. We make sure that the experiments have minimum hazards. We use a very dilute acid solution.

2. We have a 20 to 30 minute safety presentation / discussion as part of the regular lecture before the lab. This includes some general stuff (safety glasses / gloves / etc) and is also oriented towards the specific hazards they will encounter.

This seems to work best for us.

Dan Crowl

Michigan Tech

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Ralph B Stuart <rstuart**At_Symbol_Here**cornell.edu> wrote:

At Cornell, as at many campuses, we host a variety of high school age visitors to research labs for short periods of time (i.e. less than a week). Last year, shortly before one such summer event, someone pointed out to the organizer of one of these groups (which brings about 1000 4H students to campus) that people in research labs should have appropriate safety training. With short notice, we recommended our standard lab safety training, which is at a level of detail that isn't appropriate for this audience.

Generically speaking, these students visit a variety of labs for about 3 days to see science in action and hear about research in fields of interest. They may or may not have any hands on activities.

Has anyone developed an appropriate lab safety orientation for this type of group? I'd be interested in hearing about best practices for this kind of training; it sounds like I would have about 30 minutes to provide a presentation to those groups whose hosts would like safety support for these visits.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

- Ralph


Ralph Stuart CIH
Chemical Hygiene Officer
Department of Environmental Health and Safety
Cornell University

rstuart**At_Symbol_Here**cornell.edu