DCHAS-L Discussion List Archive
From: Info <info**At_Symbol_Here**ilpi.com>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Chemical safety communication challenges
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2021 12:16:19 -0400
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU>
Message-ID: FB28B68B-213F-4500-9918-5E85DAEC5506**At_Symbol_Here**ilpi.com
In-Reply-To
In the pre-GHS era, I once had a phone call about a lawsuit involving injury/harm from an incident involving THF. The manufacturer's SDS said one thing, and the SDS on the site said something different, and this was the crux of the case. Presumably these differences had some language confusion.
A friend of mine consulted on a case where someone got burned by a flammable aerosol product. Their lawyers insisted the product was not "flammable". Perhaps the ingredient the lawyer was thinking about was not flammable, but the propellant was butane. So my friend took their lawyer outside the building, whipped out a lighter and their product, and did a live demonstration. They settled immediately.
Language confusion is a broader issue in science and life as well.
As I chemist, I found that physicists would discuss similar or identical chemical concepts with a differing vocabulary. So what I would call a lattice vibration, they would call a phonon. Or they would have a broader context on certain concepts -at the molecular level we have HOMO and LUMO while they have the conduction and valence bands. I've been saying since about 1995 we need a set of interdisciplinary dictionaries that will allow folks in one discipline to understand terms within their frameworks. Perhaps something as simple as browser plugin that lets you control-click a word for info in the context you've selected.
And even within a discipline, I have also been wondering equally as long why nobody has ever come up with a search engine that lets you search in the context of your experience level. So, if you are looking for information as a research chemist you can select from "K12, genchem student, homework, organic chemistry, BS, PhD, [sub-discipline], " etc. you don't have to browse through a bunch of Chegg answers. (Yes, there is Google Scholar, of course). Or if you're a regular schmo looking for medical information about a pain in your side, you can select from "patient, parent, student, nurse, veterinarian, doctor, [specialty]" etc and you won't have to scroll past dubious medical studies from Chinese hospitals etc. [see
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5 ] Ideally you have BOTH filters, so, for example, a PhD chemist who is also a cancer patient gets more breaking medical journal results that they might understand.
Rob Toreki
One of the more interesting lab safety challenges I have run into over time is different "dialects" of lab safety terminology that arise in different sciences or within branches within a "single science" such as chemistry. For example, hazmat chemists speak a different language with the same words than research chemists or chemical educators or regulators (e.g. the words "chemical", "oxidizer" or "toxic"). While GHS has gone some distance in addressing this challenge, the reason GHS is needed is that daily language about chemical safety concerns can depend on the situation under discussion.
I wonder if anyone has examples of situations where language confusion turned out to be the source of safety confusion, or, alternatively, if you know of any literature that addresses this challenge in either EHS or other professional situations. (One reason this questions arises is that I just came out of a meeting a lawyer on personal matter and he had to re-define many of the words involved away from my professional / regulatory / semi-informed public understanding of those same words in a different context.)
Thanks for any thoughts on this topic.
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859
ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu---
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