Incidents in Educational and Academic Chemistry Laboratories: A Comparative Case Study Project

Abstract

For this thesis, eleven published case studies of laboratory incidents that involved hazardous chemicals and occurred at primary educational and academic institutions were compared. The important information on the incident settings was used to construct bowtie diagrams. This visual method served as a helpful tool to find similarities and differences of the incidents. Common themes between the different cases were lack of supervision, lack of training, deviation from established procedures, and an inadequate or delayed emergency response. Failing barriers provided several pathways for the incidents to occur. Therefore, hierarchical risk management models could not adequately accommodate dynamic teaching environments. The results of this project show that primary educational and academic facilities need to make improvements to their risk management systems and work operations. Laboratory incidents continue to occur at a high frequency. Therefore, effective methods on how to teach chemical health and safety and how to communicate occupational risk need to be developed.