RE: Reaching APASE and people like them

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Peter's story actually illustrates how POOR safety precautions are in
the schools.  The students should have been wearing safety glasses and
working under hoods if they were working with acids.  In an industrial
setting, contact lenses wouldn't have been allowed either.

When I began working in hazardous waste consulting, I was appalled to
discover how  little I had been taught about safe chemical handling in
my academic career.  In college, geology students routinely handled
chlorinated oils with different indices of refraction for ID of mineral
grains (without gloves or even a warning about cross contamination of
food and the need to wash hands afterwards).  In hazwaste settings I'd
have been in a respirator and wearing nitrile gloves and a tyvek suit to
handle these chemicals.  One of my friends had a job to go around to
high schools and audit chemistry storage areas--you would be appalled at
what she found.  Not only alphebetical storage (imagine acids next to
bases), but outdated chemicals, unknowns, and "donations" that included
shock-sensitive materials.  And these problems are still out there in
many schools.

Well a bit off topic, but safety is always timely.

Regards,
Susan

Peter.Vernig@med.va.gov wrote:

> I remember the story told in one of the classes about someone who got a
> little acid splashed in the face.  Lab partner did as had been instructed
> and grabbed his partner and shoved her bodily into the eye wash and held her
> there.  She fought to get her head out of the water.  After the suggested 10
> minutes he let her up and her first words were, "my contact lenses!"  We
> were told they were recovered from the sink trap and that they would have
> been a small price to pay to save her eye sight.

-- 
.....................................................
Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee
                       -----                       
A schedule of meetings on DOE issues is posted on our Web site
http://www.local-oversight.org/meetings.html - E-mail loc@icx.net
.....................................................
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