> >First of all, the person doing the demonstration is most likely not a safety professional and I would speculate that this person has not received much laboratory training or safety training.
>
I just came out of a discussion where we talked about what the qualifications should be for someone to conduct lab safety training in a research institution. This was sparked by the observation that conducting the training is something often that rolls down the seniority ladder to the least experienced person in EHS, and the quality of the training suffers from that. I suspect something similar happens to people doing "gee whiz" demonstrations in educational settings.
I also think that it's worth remembering that many of these demonstrations happen every day successfully, but events like this do seem to be increasing in frequency, or at least notoriety...
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH
rstuartcih**At_Symbol_Here**me.com