Marta,

 

I hope that you are compiling all these stories for a book!

 

We all celebrate Dow Chemical for their amazing safety awareness, so my story goes back to the summer of 1981 when I was a summer intern at a Dow agricultural research center in Walnut Creek California. I worked with a very senior organic chemist (he retired later that year) and I recall in my first week there him showing me how to use a tank of HCl gas. He connected Tygon tubing to the valve and then while holding the tubing out in the lab he cracked open the valve. A cloud of HCl gas formed and he said “Yup, tank has HCl gas left in it”.

 

But more interesting than that was a story from Lori who was a chemical engineering summer intern. There was a 50 foot tall 18 inch diameter stainless steel tower with a bed of ceramic beads at the bottom that was used for a chemical production process. Someone cleaning the unit made a mistake and added sulfuric acid which fused the beads at the bottom. For some reason they could not access the bottom directly, so they came up with an innovative solution: Lori was rather petite so they fit her with a mask, tied a rope around her waist, and lowered her down into the tower. Then, directing a 3 foot long piece of ½ inch rebar with her feet, she hit it with a hammer to break up the fused ceramic bed. That worked and she was celebrated as one of the best summer interns ever.

 

Craig

 

Craig A. Merlic

 

 

As we celebrate 150 years of the American Chemical Society, June has been dedicated as the ACS Safety Pillar. I would like to invite members of this vibrant and highly knowledgeable community to join ACS staff in recognizing the remarkable evolution of laboratory safety, becoming a central and integral part of both chemistry education and research.

As scientists, we value data, but stories are also powerful indicators of meaningful and ongoing change.

We would love to hear your perspective.

 

• How has laboratory safety changed over the course of your career, whether over the past 30, 20, or even 5 years?
• What stands out most to you about this transformation?

 

Let’s explore this evolution through a personal lens, perhaps by sharing an “I remember when…” moment that captures how practices, expectations, or culture have shifted over time. These reflections can bring our collective progress to life and resonate deeply across our community.

 

I’m confident there are many powerful stories among us so let’s uncover them together!

 

 

One of my stories:

 

I got my undergraduate degree in Poland, and one of my professors had quite the dramatic introduction to lab safety: he was missing a finger due to a refrigerator explosion in his lab. Our class had about 100 students, and lectures were held in a huge auditorium. During the very first lecture, he proudly displayed his incomplete hand and declared that we were all very brave for choosing chemistry as our future profession. According to him, true scientists should be prepared to make sacrifices at the altar of scientific discovery.

I remember sitting there thinking that perhaps I was not ideal chemist material, since I had no intention of sacrificing any body parts in the name of science.

Of course, after that first lecture, we all laughed about this safety demo, but the professor himself was completely serious. He wore his injury almost like a badge of honor , proof of his “scientific stamina.”

Years later, I heard that his lab was eventually shut down because the refrigerator explosions kept happening, and one of them even destroyed a very expensive piece of instrumentation. I believe he retired shortly after that ban. In hindsight, perhaps the university finally decided that repeated explosions were not an essential component of scientific freedom.

 

Looking back, what once may have been seen as a “badge of honor” now feels more like a reflection of poor safety practices and a lack of professional responsibility. Today, a faculty member proudly displaying injuries from preventable laboratory accidents would likely be viewed not as a scientific hero, but as a liability to the institution. I hope that, thanks to all our collective efforts, our discipline is evolving. Modern chemistry starts recognizing that good scientists are not the ones who cause and survive accidents; they are the ones who create strong safety cultures so accidents do not happen in the first place.

 

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--- For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional membership chair at membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org