This is interesting as HIPPA only applies to medical institutions and medical records. A student's medical history, as maintained by the academic institution, is considered part of the academic, NOT MEDICAL, record. As such, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) applies. It turns out, both HIPPA and FERPA contain a safety exception: According to FERPA's health or safety emergency exception, if a school determines that there is an articulable and significant threat to the health or safety of a student or other individuals and that someone needs Personally Identifiable Information from education records to protect the student's or other individuals' health or safety, the school may disclose that information to the people who need to know it without first gaining the student's or parent's consent.
(See https://studentprivacycompass.org/covid-19faqs/)
Perhaps the institution needs to review its policies and get a current/current interpretation of HIPPA and FERPA. Then, the chemistry department can make a list of labs/procedures for which information such as epilepsy are safety issues and records can be matched to identify students at risk. Cumbersome but legal and doable. Such personal information need only be provided to the instructor and can be kept restricted access.
Now, what types of undergraduate labs would you include on such a list? Running a Grignard? Doing a distillation? What criteria will you use to create this list? Perhaps asking the consequences of a seizure in the lab. Doing so could easily lead to the (wrong) conclusion that a student with a history of seizures should not be in a lab at all.
I would really like to hear from legal experts on this entire issue. We in the safety profession can make a case for needing the information, but it is up to our legal colleagues to determine if we can legally get the information.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stay healthy and prosper
NEAL LANGERMAN, Ph.D.
ADVANCED CHEMICAL SAFETY, Inc. (Retired)
5340 Caminito Cachorro
SAN DIEGO CA 92105
+1 (619) 990-4908
www.chemical-safety.com
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of Meg Osterby
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 2:37 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Nature Comment Pregnancy in Lab
I like the idea, but it was about down when I suggested it to the disability services folks way back then. They said it would put undue pressure on the students to self disclose and that I was not allowed to.
I truly think this is an error in the law since it is taking the privacy issue to a ridiculous extreme if one student's right to privacy endangers other students' safety. That cannot be what was intended by this law. Maybe we need to sue and try to get a judgement that interprets the law sanely in the light of safety considerations in labs.
How else could the interpretation of these laws be changed to become sensible in the light of chemical safety?
Meg Osterby's examples (epilepsy, color blindness) are useful/relevant and I know there are many others.
I have had students in the past come to me personally (via email or in-person) to disclose various disabilities (one had problems standing for long periods of time, one had difficult to manage diabetes and had to step out of longer labs for a snack or glucose test for example).
Would it be possible/legal/useful to let students know on syllabus and/or the first day of class that you're not allowed to directly ask about disabilities and they don't have to disclose anything they don't want, but there are situations where it could be in the student's (and others') best interest to disclose to the instructor and emphasize it would be VOLUNTARY and only used for safety assurances? And potentially give these types of situations as examples (epilepsy, color blindness, diabetes, etc) because students might not be aware of the types of activities or safety hazards they're getting into on the first day of class.
When I was still teaching chemistry at the technical college, I had a student one semester who was epileptic and neither she nor the disability services office thought it important to inform her lab instructor of the possibility of a seizure by this student during lab. She was subject to occasional grand mal seizures and I was appalled that the powers that be thought that the lab instructor didn't need to know that possibility existed.
My imagination could come up with scenarios of what such a seizure occuring during a dangerous lab procedure would be like. How much damage that could occur to the student herself or to nearby students if the student has a grand mal seizure during a lab period? It seemed really dangerous to me, to not know of the possibility of the student having a seizure when handling concentrated acid or setting up glassware for an experiment, or simply falling off a lab stool?
But apparently the legalities of students with a handicap or medical condition are that the information need not be given to me legally. But without knowing it, how could I keep her safe? If I had a color blind student, for example, I needed to know so I can have the student's partner to be the one monitoring color changes in an experiment, since the color blind student wouldn't be able to determine what color was seen. And disability services told me I couldn't even do this.
My point being that without knowing about such a benign "disability" I would not be able to help that student be successful in those labs involving seeing color. There's no danger to anyone, except to the grade of the student who cannot see color the same way as the other students do. And I was told it was illegal to ask if a student could see color.
So obviously, it's illegal to ask if anyone happens to be epileptic, but without knowing it and without being told how to manage a seizure if that student had one, how would I have been able to keep her safe? I could assign the normal vision partner the task of doing the titration and seeing the end point, but without knowing, how could I make sure the epileptic student was safe? If I knew, would it have been wrong to not let that student handle concentrated strong acids? The disability services office said it would be. So my question is, how can it be wrong to want to keep that student safe?
I never got an answer to this that I agreed with in terms of keeping my chemistry lab students safe. So how can it be right to not assure my student's safety?
Is this a reasonable topic for a symposium at a national meeting and/or regional meeting? Always lots of interest in this topic.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stay healthy and prosper
NEAL LANGERMAN, Ph.D.
ADVANCED CHEMICAL SAFETY, Inc. (Retired)
5340 Caminito Cachorro
SAN DIEGO CA 92105
+1 (619) 990-4908
www.chemical-safety.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of Ralph Stuart
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 10:08 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Nature Comment Pregnancy in Lab
> The end result, as you said, is a culture that isn't providing the best support to workers, but one that does provide institutions with the predictability that they need. I'm sure there are ways to meet both sets of needs, but beyond communications strategies designed to combat the perception that the institution doesn't care, it's not obvious to me what those are.
>
I agree that it is a significant challenge to balance the institutional and individual needs, particularly on issues with little technical risk information and high emotional stakes, such as pregnancy. That is why I was heartened to see that the Nature comment "conclude(s) that community is critical to improve experiences". I think that this need to support community building is part of the reason for the interest in safety culture in general and in higher education in particular.
<start promotional announcement here>
People who are interested in discussing opportunities and challenges of the the community building approach may be interested in one or both of the peer led workshops the Division is organizing this month and next:
Building a Safety Culture in Your Lab
A proactive laboratory safety culture is the key to a safer laboratory. This workshop will explore what this means and provide concrete tools you can use to support a safety culture in your lab. Register here for this workshop to be held Saturday, February 26.
Empowering Researchers to Strengthen Safety Culture Also known as the Lab Safety Teams workshop, taught by chemistry graduate students with experience with implementing and maintaining laboratory safety programs at their home institution. This workshop will next be offered Sunday, March 20, 2022; you can register for it here.
Both of these workshops are peer led and designed to include lots of interactive discussion between the workshop leaders and the attendees.
More information and registration links can be found at http://dchas.org/2022/02/01/workshops2022/
</promotional announcement here>
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org
---
For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas
---
For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas
--- For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas
--- For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas
--- For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas
