From: bjgaed@bb1t.monsanto.com
Newsgroups: sci.chem
Subject: Re: chemical safety
Date: 2 Sep 92 07:26:49 CST
Organization: Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO

In article <VSUMMERS.92Sep1164310@polaris.cv.nrao.edu>, vsummers@polaris.cv.nrao.edu (Vince Summers) writes:

> This will no doubt appear in the wrong place, but here ggoes...why not
> contact national safety council?  No doubt they would help.
> 
>    With respect to the current discussion on chemical safety, how does this
>    impact educational institutions?  I teach undergraduate chemistry courses
>    with labs -- very "safe" labs, but accidents can and do happen.  If one
>    of my students were to disregard my safety instructions and get seriously
>    hurt, would I be liable or would the college be liable?  Or both?
> 
>    Carolyn Giberson
>    giber@pollux.cs.uga.edu
>    University of Georgia  (<-- not where I teach chemistry!)

It has been my experience that the National Safety Council is really 
not a very good source for *chemical* safety information.  The 
American Chemical Society in Washington D.C. has a division devoted to 
chemical health and safety as well as numerous publications.  Try 
them.  Also, contact the insurance company that writes liability 
insurance for your school.  They may not know much about chemical 
safety, but they will probably be *very* interested in finding out for 
you.  Some of their info may not be appropriate, however.

You are, however, asking for a *legal* opinion, and you are going to 
have to go to an attorney for that.  Nobody else is going to commit 
themselves because the liability could flow from you to your school to 
whomever was foolish enough to tell you something was okay to do and 
then wasn't.

Industry has struggled with this for a much longer time than 
educational institutions, but the regulatory agencies and courts are 
now going after schools, too.  

The usual way of looking at this in industry is that the employee(s) 
who supervise the individual who is injured are agents of the 
corporation, so the corporation is liable.  Of course, there is also 
the "deep pockets" theory.  Unless you are very unusual, nobody is 
going to sue *you* because a chemistry teacher's net worth is usually 
too small for the contingency fee to be practical for the attorney.  
But, you can purchase a great deal of peace of mind by buying an 
"umbrella" liability policy that will give you a megabuck of coverage 
for very little money.  Be sure your professional liability is covered 
*in writing*.  Or, get a written statement from your school stating 
that your liability is covered by their policy (although that may not 
be worth the paper it's written on.)  ACS recently stopped offering 
professional liability insurance due to lack of interest.

Getting back to your hypothetical, it is *very* strongly impressed on 
people who supervise others in industry that if someone is injured 
because they violated safety rules, they are going to have some 
explaining to do as to why they violated the rules, *and* the 
supervisor is going to have some explaining to do as to why the 
allowed that person to violate the rules.  In general, at our company, 
these are viewed as equally serious.  Furthermore, an injury is a 
pretty big deal here.  A cut finger severe enough to require suturing 
(OSHA Recordable) will be noticed at least up to the vice president level.

Legend has it that at DuPont, the "industry standard" for safety, that 
*any* recordable injury winds up on the CEO's desk within 24 hours.  
That is *not* the sort of attention that anyone wants to get.  Do that 
two or three times and you *will* be remembered.

In my humble opinion it is high time that academic labs start taking 
safety as seriously as industry does.  This has more to do with 
attitudes than a lot of expensive equipment.  Academic institutions do 
most of the training for industry, and students are not well served if 
they arrive at their first job with poor safety habits.  

For example, what would happen at a school if you had a rule for 
safety glasses like:

First violation in the term:  Warning.
Second violation in the term: F for that lab.  No makeup.
Third violation in the term:  F for the entire course

These are the severity of penalties that would not be unusual in 
industry.  Having to repeat a course could save a student's job later 
on.  Maybe their eyesight too.

Lest you think these are trivial, it is generally accepted that:

10 near misses = 1 first aid case
10 first aid cases = 1 recordable injury
10 recordable injury = 1 lost time injury
10 lost time injuries = 1 fatality

Attention to the "little things" like proper gloves and safety glasses 
pays off in the avoidance of really serious injuries, both because of 
the proper use of pretective equipment *and* because of the attitudes 
developed about using that equipment.  

If I can be of any further help with safety issues to people working 
in academic labs please e-mail.  If industry wants academic 
institutions to improve safety preparation I think it has the 
responsibility to help out where possible.  I have a good deal of 
experience and know of a lot of resources in this area.


-- 
--Electric Monk            (Bruce Gaede); 
                            e-mail: bjgaed@ccmail.monsanto.com

"...and then time started seriously to pass."
--Douglas Adams, _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_