I worked in a laboratory for decades and was constantly aware of the things that could go wrong. One day, the day I was not in the lab, a container of halogenated waste detonated unexpectedly showering the lab with acid and glass fragments. The force of the explosion broke all the windows within the lab and outside the lab, propelled the top of the container into the next room through a glass wall and turned the glass container into sand. No one was hurt, there was one technician in the room that was showered with glass and acid but made it to an emergency shower before any injuries. After an investigation by OSHA, and others, they still had no idea what caused the container to detonate to begin with.
PPE is the last resort against something like this. That university needs some more safe working practices around stuff like that. Just a regular syringe for something that's gonna spontaneously combust when in contact with air? Having flammable chemicals around during that process? These are the deeper issues that when fixed will stop the need of ever using that PPE.
noturbinesinhell those things send me running just hearing them in a CZcams video. I feel like the chemicals can leech through the data signal and onto my hands.
Safety education needs to start in earnest at the middle school level. Students should not be ALLOWED to use laboratory equipment without passing safety tests. We most assuredly do NOT have a safety conscious culture or educational system. Safety is a habit that should be learned young. Students need to learn about preventable tragedies such as these (as part of curriculum) early on in science. What I see going from school to school is too frequently negligence in this regard.
I am a graduate student at a private research university. We have a rule that all individuals working in research labs must take a safety training course. Watching this video is part of that training.
Tertiary butylithium is notoriously famous for its high flammability, heard a lot of accidents handling this chemical. Have learned about a facility deals with this daily, in tons, they are equipped with special liquid nitrogen fire-extinguisher.
Many academic labs have poor or no safety training at all. Not merely chemistry, but electronics and mechanical engineering. The safety failures in this report improved the awareness among academic administrators because there were financial consequences to the institutions, not because of humanitarian concerns. The deaths caused by the administrative neglect in these cases have resulted in some improvement.
I assume at the higher level education the assumption is that safety training was done earlier in one's academic career. Pre-emptively passing the buck, if you will. Redundancy is never unsafe, they should embrace that.
The problem with universities is that lots of teachers have got their position after being.. students.. no industry experience at all, university all their life. Everytime i have to work at a university lab (dealing with vacuum and plasmas), i tried hard not to focus on safety as i walked over cables and equipment laying all over the place in manners taht would make anyone with any kind of electronics and electricity background cringe. Always surprised these don't go up in smoke weekly. Even when making the safety assessment before starting working, i felt like they were wondering what the hell that paper was.
HUGE Problem - Departments are often absolutely powerless to enforce policies and it puts them in a "Catch 22". It always requires a serious accident before OH&S / EH&S Departments are given the authority they need in order to enforce and oversee what goes on in academic labs and especially medical universities, where doctors and administration often neglects safety and focuses on profits - even at State facilities.
Sheri was by herself there on a holiday period when most of the campus was closed, the question is WHY, and why was anyone allowed to be there alone without at least a 2nd person?
@HobbyOrganist she clearly shouldn't have been. But how do you enforce that? I think that's the point @JP-wx6uh is getting at - in most academic settings, there is no oversight or accountability for that. Saying "this is not allowed" is easy, ensuring that no one does it is difficult.
17:30 ‘CSB would like to see a tracking system of incidents and accidents.’ It’s astonishing to me that this hasn’t been mandated for decades. It’s obviously fundamental to safety culture and improved processes.
At the University of Oregon (where I am employed), there is an entire department of Safety and Risk Services, which tracks and monitors all accidents on campus. We are all required to report all injuries, no matter how small, so that annual reports can be compiled for administration to recommend improvements to policies, procedures, and physical property. While the system doesn't prevent all injuries (I've had a few injuries on the job), the system is extremely effective at enforcing changes to prevent repeat accidents. If I have an efficiency problem, it may never get addressed, but if I have a safety problem, you can bet it gets resolved immediately.
A lab in a company I used to work for had an uncontained leak from a cylinder of chlorine gas. Afterwards, the lab looked like it had been underwater for decades. All the metalwork was corroded to hell, and the varnish had all peeled off the wooden benches. Thankfully the staff all promptly evacuated and there were no casualties.
When the chemical you work with is hypergolic with your bench, you clothes, the air, or *you* ... work slow and soft and keep what can happen at the front of your mind.
Just a note about the mortar and pestle; many people with explosives experience (ex-military especially) are used to working with shock, temperature, and pressure stable explosives. Naturally these kinds of explosives are much preferred for commercial use, almost exclusively so, and many such people are under the impression that the safety protocols they are used to are more or less universal. As this video shows, however, there are many many explosive chemicals which are shock, temperature, and pressure sensitive. Another good example that would surprise most people has to do with black powder fireworks: another video shows how the simple act of rolling a chair across a floor with black powder on it could cause an explosion.
Also, tert-bu-Li is no joke. Don't even work with in a fume hood, use an argon filled glove box. Plungers pop out, bottles get dropped. I've never heard of tert-bu-Li exposure that DIDN'T result in death.
That shit is bad news. I taught a bunch of people how to make that stuff in the early to mid 90s and I regret it after seeing how many people I knew who messed with it that had bad accidents with it. That stuff is nothing to fool around with!
I guess the only experience they had with the compound was when they first synthesized it in smaller batches. In small batches, the "clumps" are small enough that the hexane solvent they used inhibited the reaction. However, in the larger batch, the hexane couldn't reach the inside of the larger clumps, leaving them sensitive to friction. The lesson is that the hazards of scaling up a reaction can be unpredictable, and must be respected.
MeLi, BuLi and similar chemicals can be very dangerous. That unfortunate student absolutely should have been wearing a lab coat, and open solvent should have been nowhere near the whole area. Also it sounds to me like the transfer method was wildly inappropriate (we used to transfer it under inert gas). As for dimethyl mercury, you wouldn’t catch me touching it with a barge pole. Horrifically poisonous stuff.
A culture of safety is what is needed, and rules, training, and tests on the trivial minutia are unlikely to do much other than make folks feel good and keep lawyers happy. All too often the focus is on the number of cans, buckets, whatever, all the while ignoring the biggest safety hazard in the room as its too complex, too specialized, too spendy etc... The mentality that if the trivial stuff is ok, we don't need to worry about the elephant will eventually come back to bite. I think safety culture does need to start young, but it needs to be science thinking based, not just a rubric of rules. I've dealt with safety maniacs who are accidents waiting to happen, it almost appears they think their rules make them immune to danger.
You're right. A lot of times (perhaps due to lack of budget), OH&S or EH&S departments are left with no option except to hire inexperienced safety officers and coordinators. It all goes back to top-level management. If they allow safety departments to be cut out of operations and budget, there won't be sufficient safety, and you'll see accidents. It's been seen time and time again. Universities, hospitals, and research facilities have become more focused on money than proper safety programs and training.
Amen, personal safety should trump any other activity. Things happen, but losing a life is not worth the failures of safety training and safety steps when dealing with dangerous substances. Dimethyl mercury is a serious concern....
Case 1. Why was she wearing her own clothes she uses daily? I would newer dress in ordinary clothes when handling any materials. That is why workers have work clothes? If i work with unstable materials, my first Q is, what clothes and protective gear is minimum? I do not blame her, but safety need to be addresses at every level. Do not, ever, get into being just the slightest casual, and think it is just another normal day. It is not!
This is the problem. OH&S (EH&S) Departments are basically pushed out of the entire process unless there is support from the very top of the institution. So they are conveniently put somewhere in the organizational structure that weakens their ability to do their job. They're underfunded and not given enough staff as well.
@@Bankable2790 Indeed. And that is by design. One of the reasons why investigative bodies like the US CSB or the NTSB's recommendations are 'right on the money' is precisely _because_ they don't have to worry about what recommendations can be implemented by regulators in an environment of corruption and rubber stamping. They simply investigate what caused the incident and what could've prevented it and leave it to the regulators (OSHA, FAA) to figure it out.
Sadly, nothing has changed, especially reading the comments below from years past. I feel the current staff at my company lack the skill set to perform the common tasks at being at the bench. The amount of posted videos on LinkedIn I see, prove that this field is going in the wrong direction. Laboratory technique is the biggest fail point thus far. That young girl should have been wearing a fire retardant lab coat. She should been adding the BuLi solution via cannula under Argon low positive pressure. An Argon Balloon would have sufficed adding to a dropping funnel regulated to the given reaction.The sash of the fumehood should have been lowered to working height. She should not have been working alone. From what I gathered from this video, her reaction looks to have been rushed to cause back pressure in the syringe she was using. A colleague just performed a similar type of reaction, at a much larger scale. She executed the reaction flawlessly . Training goes a long long way, other then being mindful at the type of reaction being conducted. This girl was only 23 years old. She should have been taught a lot better technique, maybe she would have been alive today. Very sad. I see these types of behaviour in the labs where I work everyday. I literally saw a chemist moving a sealed 600 mL Pressure vessel filled with Hydrogen with a Pd/C 10% Catalyst at 400PSI by hand throughout the hallways. His supervisor currently has a record number of near misses with regards to Medium pressure Hg lamps at 450W for photochemical reactions in his lab. There shouldn’t be an excuse for this. That supervisor has yet to be even addressed or held accountable. Using the right PPE is pivotal in this field of work. This video was sent to me via email by our Health and Safety Team. Yet, the nitrile gloves given to staff are low ply, poor quality and break easily. Although, the gesture to promote awareness is there,this seems so very hypocritical.
I hadn't seen a USCSB video before the era of spectacular computer generated recreations. I have to say the hand-drawn images reflect the professionalism and excellence I've come to expect from the Chemical Safety Board. A rubber apron and face shield at the UCLA incident might have done the trick, but that's 12 years in hindsight from someone whos had a couple of things blow up in my face.
One of these three incidents is not like the others. In between two cases of graduate students who didn't use standard precautions that should have been well known to them (and it's considered their seniors' responsibility, for not making it clear that they not only should do it, but must) -- is a senior researcher who used all the standard precautions she knew about. In her case, it didn't occur to her that she was working with a substance so unusual and extreme that the risks might not be fully known. She presumably could have come up with a plan for trying to avoid _unknown_ hazards if she had thought to. But I guess normalization of risk came into it in all three cases. For the students, they could have said, "This stuff is evidently dangerous: I should read up/ask around about how to handle it." But they weren't encouraged to think like that. The researcher could have said, "This stuff is so dangerous that I shouldn't rely on one source of information about it: if I can't find enough information, I 'll make a special plan for handling it." But none of her colleagues thought like that. So, that's why safety _culture_ is the word. A person's much more likely to think safely if everyone does.
I disturbed the Forensic Lab I was studying in by extracting pure Nitroglycerine from a double base shotgun powder bit of a headache and half an hour disposing of it in micropipettes and a Bunsen burner. My Military training before this took me through open field exercises using Sarin (Agent GB) and other very nasty compounds some of which are no longer made. I also had considerably live demolition training. Always know what you are dealing with, what special personal protective gear may be needed, what safe procedures are along with where and how to use emergency equipment. Keep all materials that are not being used for a procedure in hardened storage protected from both blast, splash and fumes.
Because college is full of total idiots. I've never seen one that had any sense. They can't read. They can't comprehend! Can't SPELL at a 3rd grade level. That's why.
It's very, very common. University safety culture in general is bad. I myself didn't learn any better until I started working in the pharmaceutical industry.
When I worked as a contractor in DuPont we were washing catalyst trays in an out of service reactor. One day a small fire started while we were washing with water. The material was not supposed to be reactive to water. We smothered it out and took a sample to the lab for testing. The stuff caught on fire while sitting in a plastic bag on the counter. No one new why. Come on now, this is a chemical company right?!😮
I once was handling a container with base which swished up and hit me right on the safety glasses. I got assistance and was ok. My lab partner had no glasses on and was told to put them on. This was in collage. I was also sprayed in the safety glasses with acid after a long Pipette broke with 6M HCl. I got a tiny bit in my eye, I carried on and didn't report. I had slight irritation but it didn't hurt and I could see fine. This was in University. More pressure and less help will cause this.
It kind of like knowing something about explosives chemistry and seeing a diagram of something organic with a whole mess of nitros and azides stuck on everywhere they'll fit. You just don't even want to look at that diagram, never mind get crazy and make the stuff.
just make sure your Different Precautions do not Cancel each other Out.
Před 4 lety+3
Great you made this video. Hard to find alot of info. Thank you👏👏👏I knew as soon as they started talking the story they were referring to. Her Supervisor should've been prosecuted. I was reading about 1997 Mercury accident....
I'm not sure how got here, but it was a very informative video. It brought awareness to a whole different culture that's going on in the background of everyday life that I don't generally need to consider within my own. Oddly enough, I did know about the mercury/heavy metal poisoning case. It made a huge impact on me and caused me to re-evaluate my own health safety measures within my home by taking cleaning products more seriously, researching what I use for the chemical interactions with other products, what they are intended to be specifically used or designed for, and how to use them safely. It's actually quite crazy how much we take for granted in our daily activities without ever questioning if we should be so comfortable with the routines that we've established. I wonder how many people read the labels on bleach, or even give a second thought about the ingredients in the dish soap that they use multiple times a day. Few individuals that I know are aware that certain brands of dish soap warn about the negative interaction between the two, depending on the chemical compouds in the soap.
Back before smart phones, reading labels was one of the only things to do while sitting on the toilet. I guess that would only help your shampoo and bathroom cleaner education.
Tragic, being cut down early in life for such a talented person. Sad that safety was not priority. A life is impossible to replace... My heart goes out to her. You should never jeapordisze a life over production....
Because the filming guy just showed up some day and said "pipette something! Everyone knows that chemists always pipette stuff!" "But ... that's a closed system and the last step of my 39 step synthesis. If I open it, I will ruin it" "Then pipette something else! People want to see you do that!"
there was a chemical spill that happened during lab when i was taking the general chemistry sequence at my local community college; the bottle of acid somehow exploded in his hands as he was opening it, there was glass all over the floor. i forget the exact chemical, but it was one of the more corrosive acids, i want to say sulfuric acid? anyway, the guy was lucky that the only casualty was his hoodie becoming tie-dye. professor took a picture of the broken bottle pieces to send to whoever was responsible for that type of stuff.
Wait, TX does not have its own OSHA-approved state safety program. Then how come this exempts "public schools in TX" from complying with OSHA Laboratory Standard 29 CFR 1910.1450? I'm confused
States rights. Technically If it doesn’t go across state lines the State can tell the Federal Government to stay out of it. It’s how States legalize Marijuana when it’s federally illegal.
Texas tends to have its own totally separate system that has its own rules. For example, the Texas Water Commission enforces Texas laws concerning all water quality and pollution issues. Federal laws will apply to the vast majority of Texas processes, but Texas laws are an additional level. So they may mean that Texas lacks a department that duplicates OSHA enforcement and leaves that to the feds.
Planning, PPE, and proper understanding of the hazards of the materials and processes and equipment you are dealing with usually are the safest plan, but, in research an overabundance of caution must be used because there may not be enough information about your doing.
This case always makes me so sad cuz her family really never got any justice for it and the professor took very minimal responsibility for his role in the accident. Safety in his lab is his purview, but he sure doesn’t seem to see it that way.
The nature of experimentation runs at odds with a prescribed safety program in that, all aspects (or outcomes) of the operations cannot always be reasonably predicted. The environment in which the experiment is conducted can be controlled, as well as the personal protective gear worn by the researcher. Also, many of these operations that involve physically mixing chemical substances could be performed with robotic devices, lessening the danger of burns and explosions to personnel.
El video es muy interesante, principalmente para hacer conciencia de la importancia que tiene el buen manejo de los materiales dentro de un laboratorio de química, así como el implemento de las medidas de seguridad sugeridas por investigadores. Conocer el material con que se trabaja (químicos corrosivos e inflamables) para prevenir accidentes o en caso contrario contrarrestar daños. Usar el equipo y ropa adecuados, así como acatar con sumo cuidado cada instrucción y evitar cualquier desastre.
Improper personal protection equipment, handling highly unstable chemicals required stringent safety protocols, including a fire watch ,flame retardant clothing
1. What safety rules did the 23 year old research assistant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) not follow? 2. What safety rule did Professor Karen Wetterhan not follow while completing experiments at Dartmouth College? 3. What safety rules did the two graduate students at Texas Tech University not follow?
I've worked in construction/commercial painting and have seen many chemical accidents happen, once I even got DCM in my eyeball. Funny to me that we focus on these few freak accidents while people are dying everyday just trying to refinish their home/vehicles and im OSHA 30 certified
@@junkman8742 It is interesting the things sold over the counter to untrained, unknowning laypeople, isn't it? How to read labels and more importantly, how to THINK about safety is possibly something that should be in high schools, not just once, but throughout.
I once damaged a bunch of equipment and coated an entire vacuum apparatus in fine soot by assembling it before all the solvent vapors from cleaning had flashed off and they ignited by a hot wire vacuum gauge. Luckily it was a very strong apparatus and contained the explosion and no one was hurt. Too often labwork is done by two groups of people: new grads and interns who don't understand how badly things can go wrong, and seasoned experts who think they are immune to rookie mistakes. I recommend this channel to a lot of my colleagues for presenting critical information in an engaging format.
would like to ask some questions about the solutions by apply all the hierarchy of control to prevent similar accidents in future of Texas Tech Lessons that happened on 7 January 2010. Thank you
Pulls plunger out the back of syringe holding pyrophiric chemical in a hood with an open container orf flammable solvent while not wearing any PPE….sounds like training issue. Her professor is to blame
In experiments sometimes things just go wrong and you have to be prepared for any eventuality. One of our science teachers recalled an incident when she was preparing the test where you put Lithium, Sodium and Potassium in a large bowl with some water, she was testing it out when she was back blown into a cupboard. Must have been a dodgy batch of one of the metals.
I still remember I save the whole lab from a big fire or explosion, it is in summer vacation, my collegue was doing flame fuel cell, but he forget to look for the flame, and the flame burn out along the wire to the machine, a GC. We have a lot of hydrogen cylinder in the lab! I just see this at that very moment, and put the fire down using fire extinguisher! I think I have saved the whole buliding and many lifes, I come from china and now a postdoc in US
One of the better videos, but like the instructionals for physical safety that are recommended herein, there should be highlights throughout the video for untrained listeners for when they might be listening to bullshit. My warning alerts sounded a few times.
Not even remotely. And I’m wary enough to go to Granger and get them myself. Common use PPE is frequently lacking in quality at manufacture, never mind after frequent use and lackluster care and maintenance.
She was a 23 year old adult, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. After completing that course of study, with progressively more laboratory experience, she *should* have had sufficient knowledge to do a proper risk assessment of her work procedures... As a student of 18, I worked as a lab aide - somewhat less responsible than her position - handling some rather interesting chemicals, with minimal supervision. I was aware of the risks of the materials with which I was working, and always wore proper PPE. I was properly trained. Others were not always. It's not only an issue of age, but attitude. However, even at top rated universities, there is a sad situation where some percentage of the students do not internalize safe work practices and risk assessments. The research culture needs to be much less tolerant of unsafe work, and much more emphatic about safe work practices.
I'm not a chemist but I would presume you would need a sealed glove box (rather than a fume hood) to contain the nitrogen or whatever inert gas you would use to prevent combustion. Otherwise I could see someone inhaling a bit and potentially becoming hypoxic, judgement would probably slip leading to a higher risk of incident.
Karen and the mercury compound were featured in another channels video by Chubbyemu- "Description I make medical videos, telling stories in medicine. These are variations on cases I, or my colleagues, have seen in the past. The main goal of these videos are to tell a story about people, as we each have a unique story to tell." The SDS sheet the chemical co provided saying to use latex gloves was accurate, but you DO have to buy QUALITY gloves and only use them ONCE, I suspect karen either had cheap ones supplied by the University, or she took them off more than once and re-used them. I cant imagine why anyone would feel the need to mess with dimethylmercury in the first place!
If you'd like to participate in a community that shares terrible chemistry safety practices and other chemical shenanigans you should join us over at That Chemist. I'm totally not paid or a sponsor or anything, but I love sharing near miss lab stories with a supportive community!
They should have had enclosed chambers with gloves in holes to work with the chemical, and the chamber should have been filled with something like pure nitrogen or argon.
@@greyfox3755 yep, though if you read anything from experienced chemists you'll know the procedure she was using is pretty standard, the lack of safety equipment not so much.
@@darthkarl99 I think that I can guess why. The money that funds the research is fiat currency. So, the students are under pressure to perform under substandard conditions to cut costs. We should blame the bank notes.
@@henryng439 When i say experienced chemists i'm including industrial chemists and the like working in company, not academic labs. From what i've read short of somthing chatastrophic like the plunger failure it fairly safe as the amount you can squeeze out through the needle end will generally burn up before it can set anything on fire. It takes a very large spill or direct application to fairly flammable material to get it to start a fire. The situation that occurred is about as bad as a spill of it can get in terms of ability to set things on fire, proper protective clothing and proper safety precautions like removing nearby solvents makes even that a relatively mild accident.
Should have done it in a flame hood with a positive pressure inert atmosphere. Alot of people on here talk about oh well how stupid it was to do it, but you know this process of grinding explosive materials into smaller granules is a common practice, its also how you make black powder. You add water to the mixture though to prevent explosion.
There is a BIG difference between gunpowder and modern, primary explosives... The first one isn't even a "real" explosive as it will just burn quickly, but not detonate unless you put it in a confined space. Perchlorates (and other primary explosives) will explode and send pieces of whatever they where sitting on flying. So yeah, grinding 5g of primary explosives is just as stupid as everyone else is saying... When it goes off, your hand will probably either just disintegrate or be filled with the fragments of your mortar. Now to the "When": If a "close relative" of the substance you are working with (NHN) has a friction sensitivity of 16 N (when grinding it with a pestle), it is a rather stupid idea to put it anywhere near a mortar as you will exceed this force quite easily. So: The idea of grinding it was extremely dumb, as is any idea of grinding a new explosive substance for which no datasheets exist. And yes, no one knew if that new compound would be explosive, but if you are combining two known explosives (Nickel hydrazine and a perchlorate) it's a good idea to handle it like it IS in fact explosive. Oh, and just to add to your misunderstanding/lack of knowledge: It would have exploded under an inert atmosphere since it already had the oxygen needed to decompose (explode) in form of the perchlorate (a Chlorine atom with four(!!) oxygen atoms attached to it). Nearly every explosive substances (if not all) have their own oxygen needed for decomposition as it would take to long to get oxygen out of the air, thereby slowing down the explosion and making it "just" highly flammable.
@@eulemitbeule5426 oxygen is one of the most reactive things known. its what gives acids there power virtually all acids contain oxygen. ammonium nitrate is fairly safe to handle and will simply burn vigorously if ignited unless its mixed with fuel and contained. on its own its a strong oxidiser. ammonia it self is flammable the main danger though is its highly toxic and corrosive. there was a incident a few yrs back involving a truck rollover and ammonium nitrate when they tried to extinguish the fire it exploded. had they just spread it out and let it burn itself out it probably wouldnt have detonated. it completely destroyed a fire truck 2 cop cars and a rail bridge that was near by.
@@chrisforgan731 Ammonium nitrate is believed to build up pressure when smoldering in a piled up condition, as was the case in West, TX and Beirut, Lebanon. As the AN gets hot, it becomes less stable, and that can be very dangerous. Remember, that for explosion, your fire also needs confinement and pressure. A trailer load of AN can rapidly build up to an explosive condition when burning. Very early irrigation / deluge with copius amounts of water will dissolve and disperse the fuel supply. In addition to the heat removed by evaporation of the fire fighting water, dissolving ammonium nitrate is endothermic, and chills its surroundings. That said, there are frequently conditions where the fire is already too energetic, and the AN thus is too unstable to approach, and then the proper method is to pull back to a safe distance and let it burn / explode.
If they were concerned by batch to batch differences in the explosive, they could prepare it in small batches, mix with solvent and combine the batches at the end maybe.
For larger than 5-10 mL of something like tBuLi she should have cannulated it into a flame-dried graduated cylinder under nitrogen then cannulated it into her reaction. That was standard procedure in my graduate lab.
I worked in a laboratory for decades and was constantly aware of the things that could go wrong. One day, the day I was not in the lab, a container of halogenated waste detonated unexpectedly showering the lab with acid and glass fragments. The force of the explosion broke all the windows within the lab and outside the lab, propelled the top of the container into the next room through a glass wall and turned the glass container into sand. No one was hurt, there was one technician in the room that was showered with glass and acid but made it to an emergency shower before any injuries. After an investigation by OSHA, and others, they still had no idea what caused the container to detonate to begin with.
Holy shit! You're very lucky. Especially that guy who made it to the shower.
Someone looked at it wrong.
A brisk fart could set that shit off.
Undetermined ignition sauce got spilled on it. They say that one alot.
Thank you for sharing your lab safety story.
"hydrazine" and "perchlorate" would send me running if I had no PPE.
PPE? I think you mean "bomb robot".
Did work with hydrazine as part of my education ..very evil stuff ..The positive thing was that I got a lab all to my self..
PPE is the last resort against something like this. That university needs some more safe working practices around stuff like that. Just a regular syringe for something that's gonna spontaneously combust when in contact with air? Having flammable chemicals around during that process? These are the deeper issues that when fixed will stop the need of ever using that PPE.
noturbinesinhell TEA
noturbinesinhell those things send me running just hearing them in a CZcams video. I feel like the chemicals can leech through the data signal and onto my hands.
In 1984, my high school chemistry teacher was demonstrating white phospher and dropped some. We learned how to operate a fire extinguisher that day.
Didn't happen
@@1lapmagicYou didn't happen
I’m becoming addicted to these videos
Your not the only, these videos are addicting
I can stop anytime.
@@Bankable2790 no you can't lol
Safety education needs to start in earnest at the middle school level. Students should not be ALLOWED to use laboratory equipment without passing safety tests. We most assuredly do NOT have a safety conscious culture or educational system. Safety is a habit that should be learned young. Students need to learn about preventable tragedies such as these (as part of curriculum) early on in science. What I see going from school to school is too frequently negligence in this regard.
I am a graduate student at a private research university. We have a rule that all individuals working in research labs must take a safety training course. Watching this video is part of that training.
The really scary thing is that someone else could be tired, irritated or under pressure and screw up with disastrous results to you.
Welcome to freeway driving.....!
That's why I'm.over here. And know well, if property is cheap near some kind of plant, there's a reason for that.
That’s my nightmare-the person next to me making a mistake
Tertiary butylithium is notoriously famous for its high flammability, heard a lot of accidents handling this chemical. Have learned about a facility deals with this daily, in tons, they are equipped with special liquid nitrogen fire-extinguisher.
And it will chemically burn you while it's burning you with fire :(
If we need safety practices in mining, it ought to filter into everything else. Taking care of ourselves is OUR job.
Thanks CSB!
Many academic labs have poor or no safety training at all. Not merely chemistry, but electronics and mechanical engineering. The safety failures in this report improved the awareness among academic administrators because there were financial consequences to the institutions, not because of humanitarian concerns. The deaths caused by the administrative neglect in these cases have resulted in some improvement.
many safety trainers have no chemistry background
What makes you think there were no humanitarian concerns involved? :-(
I assume at the higher level education the assumption is that safety training was done earlier in one's academic career.
Pre-emptively passing the buck, if you will. Redundancy is never unsafe, they should embrace that.
It gets pretty scary in many biology/biochemistry labs.
The problem with universities is that lots of teachers have got their position after being.. students.. no industry experience at all, university all their life. Everytime i have to work at a university lab (dealing with vacuum and plasmas), i tried hard not to focus on safety as i walked over cables and equipment laying all over the place in manners taht would make anyone with any kind of electronics and electricity background cringe. Always surprised these don't go up in smoke weekly.
Even when making the safety assessment before starting working, i felt like they were wondering what the hell that paper was.
The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' by Sidney Dekker is a must read for everyone.
HUGE Problem - Departments are often absolutely powerless to enforce policies and it puts them in a "Catch 22". It always requires a serious accident before OH&S / EH&S Departments are given the authority they need in order to enforce and oversee what goes on in academic labs and especially medical universities, where doctors and administration often neglects safety and focuses on profits - even at State facilities.
Sheri was by herself there on a holiday period when most of the campus was closed, the question is WHY, and why was anyone allowed to be there alone without at least a 2nd person?
@HobbyOrganist she clearly shouldn't have been. But how do you enforce that? I think that's the point @JP-wx6uh is getting at - in most academic settings, there is no oversight or accountability for that. Saying "this is not allowed" is easy, ensuring that no one does it is difficult.
"With great power comes great responsibility"
Unless you're in management, apparently...
Yuuuup. My lab is poorly managed too.
You mean "unless you're in MANGLEMENT,..."
Or have some type of city job, where you can kill hundreds of people with complete immunity. Fire marshalls and building inspectors come to mind.
17:30 ‘CSB would like to see a tracking system of incidents and accidents.’ It’s astonishing to me that this hasn’t been mandated for decades. It’s obviously fundamental to safety culture and improved processes.
Inactive people sat and watched too
Til us people enforce the rules they have no incentive
At the University of Oregon (where I am employed), there is an entire department of Safety and Risk Services, which tracks and monitors all accidents on campus. We are all required to report all injuries, no matter how small, so that annual reports can be compiled for administration to recommend improvements to policies, procedures, and physical property. While the system doesn't prevent all injuries (I've had a few injuries on the job), the system is extremely effective at enforcing changes to prevent repeat accidents. If I have an efficiency problem, it may never get addressed, but if I have a safety problem, you can bet it gets resolved immediately.
A lab in a company I used to work for had an uncontained leak from a cylinder of chlorine gas. Afterwards, the lab looked like it had been underwater for decades. All the metalwork was corroded to hell, and the varnish had all peeled off the wooden benches. Thankfully the staff all promptly evacuated and there were no casualties.
Stainless no more...
When the chemical you work with is hypergolic with your bench, you clothes, the air, or *you* ... work slow and soft and keep what can happen at the front of your mind.
Just a note about the mortar and pestle; many people with explosives experience (ex-military especially) are used to working with shock, temperature, and pressure stable explosives. Naturally these kinds of explosives are much preferred for commercial use, almost exclusively so, and many such people are under the impression that the safety protocols they are used to are more or less universal. As this video shows, however, there are many many explosive chemicals which are shock, temperature, and pressure sensitive. Another good example that would surprise most people has to do with black powder fireworks: another video shows how the simple act of rolling a chair across a floor with black powder on it could cause an explosion.
Also, tert-bu-Li is no joke. Don't even work with in a fume hood, use an argon filled glove box. Plungers pop out, bottles get dropped. I've never heard of tert-bu-Li exposure that DIDN'T result in death.
@@jermainerace4156 When the fire diamond is all 4's, you better believe it's no joke
@@samuelberz1476 for real. even the radioisotope lab in my department isn't all 4's, and they work with, well, radioactive isotopes.
"A chemistry student decided to mortar and pestle a primary explosive." Had me laughing. Other than that, very informative video.
+Chemistry right the fucker is crazy, my next time he can grind up some TATP crystals.
That shit is bad news. I taught a bunch of people how to make that stuff in the early to mid 90s and I regret it after seeing how many people I knew who messed with it that had bad accidents with it. That stuff is nothing to fool around with!
I guess the only experience they had with the compound was when they first synthesized it in smaller batches. In small batches, the "clumps" are small enough that the hexane solvent they used inhibited the reaction. However, in the larger batch, the hexane couldn't reach the inside of the larger clumps, leaving them sensitive to friction.
The lesson is that the hazards of scaling up a reaction can be unpredictable, and must be respected.
what are you supposed to do then idiot? she used too much it's her fault not the procedure fucktard
test successful.
MeLi, BuLi and similar chemicals can be very dangerous. That unfortunate student absolutely should have been wearing a lab coat, and open solvent should have been nowhere near the whole area. Also it sounds to me like the transfer method was wildly inappropriate (we used to transfer it under inert gas).
As for dimethyl mercury, you wouldn’t catch me touching it with a barge pole. Horrifically poisonous stuff.
That particular SDS (for the Dimethyl mercury) was a contributing factor IMO.
Dimethyl mercury is pretty high up there on the list of genuinely horrifying chemicals
Three years later but I'm agreeing with you
Very sad, such a young girl dying so horribly is a tragedy. Rest in peace, Shari. 😞
"Welcome to my laboratory, where safety is not even a priority."
Safety regulations are often paid for in blood and lives. A cost much cheaper than money.
@@tactknightgaming2066Lechekdisout
A culture of safety is what is needed, and rules, training, and tests on the trivial minutia are unlikely to do much other than make folks feel good and keep lawyers happy. All too often the focus is on the number of cans, buckets, whatever, all the while ignoring the biggest safety hazard in the room as its too complex, too specialized, too spendy etc... The mentality that if the trivial stuff is ok, we don't need to worry about the elephant will eventually come back to bite. I think safety culture does need to start young, but it needs to be science thinking based, not just a rubric of rules. I've dealt with safety maniacs who are accidents waiting to happen, it almost appears they think their rules make them immune to danger.
You're right. A lot of times (perhaps due to lack of budget), OH&S or EH&S departments are left with no option except to hire inexperienced safety officers and coordinators. It all goes back to top-level management. If they allow safety departments to be cut out of operations and budget, there won't be sufficient safety, and you'll see accidents. It's been seen time and time again. Universities, hospitals, and research facilities have become more focused on money than proper safety programs and training.
Amen, personal safety should trump any other activity. Things happen, but losing a life is not worth the failures of safety training and safety steps when dealing with dangerous substances. Dimethyl mercury is a serious concern....
13:55 "Insufficient safety accountability and oversight by the principal investigators."
Well duh. My PI hasn't stepped in my lab in a year.
Case 1. Why was she wearing her own clothes she uses daily? I would newer dress in ordinary clothes when handling any materials. That is why workers have work clothes? If i work with unstable materials, my first Q is, what clothes and protective gear is minimum? I do not blame her, but safety need to be addresses at every level. Do not, ever, get into being just the slightest casual, and think it is just another normal day. It is not!
I agree.
If I was working with chemicals that self ignite I would dress like a welder, no synthetics.
This is the problem. OH&S (EH&S) Departments are basically pushed out of the entire process unless there is support from the very top of the institution. So they are conveniently put somewhere in the organizational structure that weakens their ability to do their job. They're underfunded and not given enough staff as well.
Dude just like the Chemical Safety Board itself! All they can do is make recommendations.
In universities, professors run their labs like fiefdoms. You likely don't grasp how much they resist ANY external supervision.
@@Bankable2790 Indeed. And that is by design.
One of the reasons why investigative bodies like the US CSB or the NTSB's recommendations are 'right on the money' is precisely _because_ they don't have to worry about what recommendations can be implemented by regulators in an environment of corruption and rubber stamping.
They simply investigate what caused the incident and what could've prevented it and leave it to the regulators (OSHA, FAA) to figure it out.
We learn about Sherry in our inorganic undergrad lab when we deal with nBuLi. Her death wasn’t in vain many have learned safety from her!
Sadly, nothing has changed, especially reading the comments below from years past. I feel the current staff at my company lack the skill set to perform the common tasks at being at the bench. The amount of posted videos on LinkedIn I see, prove that this field is going in the wrong direction. Laboratory technique is the biggest fail point thus far. That young girl should have been wearing a fire retardant lab coat. She should been adding the BuLi solution via cannula under Argon low positive pressure. An Argon Balloon would have sufficed adding to a dropping funnel regulated to the given reaction.The sash of the fumehood should have been lowered to working height. She should not have been working alone. From what I gathered from this video, her reaction looks to have been rushed to cause back pressure in the syringe she was using. A colleague just performed a similar type of reaction, at a much larger scale. She executed the reaction flawlessly . Training goes a long long way, other then being mindful at the type of reaction being conducted.
This girl was only 23 years old. She should have been taught a lot better technique, maybe she would have been alive today. Very sad.
I see these types of behaviour in the labs where I work everyday. I literally saw a chemist moving a sealed 600 mL Pressure vessel filled with Hydrogen with a Pd/C 10% Catalyst at 400PSI by hand throughout the hallways. His supervisor currently has a record number of near misses with regards to Medium pressure Hg lamps at 450W for photochemical reactions in his lab.
There shouldn’t be an excuse for this.
That supervisor has yet to be even addressed or held accountable.
Using the right PPE is pivotal in this field of work. This video was sent to me via email by our Health and Safety Team. Yet, the nitrile gloves given to staff are low ply, poor quality and break easily. Although, the gesture to promote awareness is there,this seems so very hypocritical.
I work in a refinery. A contractor was recently shown to the gate for not wearing proper safety glasses. This laxitude shocks me.
I hadn't seen a USCSB video before the era of spectacular computer generated recreations. I have to say the hand-drawn images reflect the professionalism and excellence I've come to expect from the Chemical Safety Board. A rubber apron and face shield at the UCLA incident might have done the trick, but that's 12 years in hindsight from someone whos had a couple of things blow up in my face.
One of these three incidents is not like the others. In between two cases of graduate students who didn't use standard precautions that should have been well known to them (and it's considered their seniors' responsibility, for not making it clear that they not only should do it, but must) -- is a senior researcher who used all the standard precautions she knew about. In her case, it didn't occur to her that she was working with a substance so unusual and extreme that the risks might not be fully known. She presumably could have come up with a plan for trying to avoid _unknown_ hazards if she had thought to.
But I guess normalization of risk came into it in all three cases. For the students, they could have said, "This stuff is evidently dangerous: I should read up/ask around about how to handle it." But they weren't encouraged to think like that. The researcher could have said, "This stuff is so dangerous that I shouldn't rely on one source of information about it: if I can't find enough information, I 'll make a special plan for handling it." But none of her colleagues thought like that. So, that's why safety _culture_ is the word. A person's much more likely to think safely if everyone does.
I can't believe they just let people handle dangerous items with barely any PPE.
I disturbed the Forensic Lab I was studying in by extracting pure Nitroglycerine from a double base shotgun powder bit of a headache and half an hour disposing of it in micropipettes and a Bunsen burner. My Military training before this took me through open field exercises using Sarin (Agent GB) and other very nasty compounds some of which are no longer made. I also had considerably live demolition training.
Always know what you are dealing with, what special personal protective gear may be needed, what safe procedures are along with where and how to use emergency equipment. Keep all materials that are not being used for a procedure in hardened storage protected from both blast, splash and fumes.
We learned about the fire at UCLA in high school chemistry class. Scary stuff
She has no PPE ON??????? HOW. How do u go to school for chemistry and you handle deadly shit without PPE
Because college is full of total idiots. I've never seen one that had any sense. They can't read. They can't comprehend! Can't SPELL at a 3rd grade level.
That's why.
It's very, very common. University safety culture in general is bad. I myself didn't learn any better until I started working in the pharmaceutical industry.
When I worked as a contractor in DuPont we were washing catalyst trays in an out of service reactor. One day a small fire started while we were washing with water. The material was not supposed to be reactive to water. We smothered it out and took a sample to the lab for testing. The stuff caught on fire while sitting in a plastic bag on the counter. No one new why. Come on now, this is a chemical company right?!😮
I once was handling a container with base which swished up and hit me right on the safety glasses. I got assistance and was ok. My lab partner had no glasses on and was told to put them on. This was in collage.
I was also sprayed in the safety glasses with acid after a long Pipette broke with 6M HCl. I got a tiny bit in my eye, I carried on and didn't report. I had slight irritation but it didn't hurt and I could see fine. This was in University. More pressure and less help will cause this.
I never understood why students don't wear PPEs. This isn't a family barbecue. You're working with CHEMICALS!!!
because university administration is too cheap to get proper PPE for their students.
having watched a NASA safety video on youtube about Hydrazine anything, That stuff is seriously terrifying.
I believe perchlorates tend to explode if you look at them funny, too - so I'm sure combining the two makes for a generally worrisome thing to handle.
It kind of like knowing something about explosives chemistry and seeing a diagram of something organic with a whole mess of nitros and azides stuck on everywhere they'll fit.
You just don't even want to look at that diagram, never mind get crazy and make the stuff.
Be smart, take every single precaution you can.
Safety first always
just make sure your Different Precautions do not Cancel each other Out.
Great you made this video. Hard to find alot of info. Thank you👏👏👏I knew as soon as they started talking the story they were referring to. Her Supervisor should've been prosecuted. I was reading about 1997 Mercury accident....
I'm not sure how got here, but it was a very informative video.
It brought awareness to a whole different culture that's going on in the background of everyday life that I don't generally need to consider within my own.
Oddly enough, I did know about the mercury/heavy metal poisoning case.
It made a huge impact on me and caused me to re-evaluate my own health safety measures within my home by taking cleaning products more seriously, researching what I use for the chemical interactions with other products, what they are intended to be specifically used or designed for, and how to use them safely.
It's actually quite crazy how much we take for granted in our daily activities without ever questioning if we should be so comfortable with the routines that we've established.
I wonder how many people read the labels on bleach, or even give a second thought about the ingredients in the dish soap that they use multiple times a day.
Few individuals that I know are aware that certain brands of dish soap warn about the negative interaction between the two, depending on the chemical compouds in the soap.
Back before smart phones, reading labels was one of the only things to do while sitting on the toilet. I guess that would only help your shampoo and bathroom cleaner education.
Effective research-specific HazCom and training r key factors here. Thanks CSB for sharing.
If you link high accident rates to a drop in shareholder's earnings, through regulation and taxation, accident rates and injury severity would drop.
Welcome to "management pressuring employees to not report accidents and near misses"
Tragic, being cut down early in life for such a talented person. Sad that safety was not priority. A life is impossible to replace... My heart goes out to her. You should never jeapordisze a life over production....
SDS give you a pretty clear guide for what label peppery your working materials. It’s not rocket science until you ignore them💥🔥
The stock footage just confuses me... Why would the girl at 15:18 take out samples of the heating bath? It's just a bowl of tap water!
Because the filming guy just showed up some day and said "pipette something! Everyone knows that chemists always pipette stuff!" "But ... that's a closed system and the last step of my 39 step synthesis. If I open it, I will ruin it" "Then pipette something else! People want to see you do that!"
Lol
So glad I studied soil science. We did not need glasses in the lab lol.
It's for everyone's safety. Just wear the PPE!
Great video. Very informative and useful.
Latex gloves vs mercury.... Very careful indeed
tecnically you are wrong because it was not elemental
“Safety must be the the primary concern of all laboratories”
University of Chicago in the 40s: uhhhhhhh
My University 2021: Uhhhhh
One of the few government agencies that do their job well and transparently, with public dissemination.
Ignites on contact with air... why does she even have that
Great safety video.
Let's crush some explosives yey
there was a chemical spill that happened during lab when i was taking the general chemistry sequence at my local community college; the bottle of acid somehow exploded in his hands as he was opening it, there was glass all over the floor. i forget the exact chemical, but it was one of the more corrosive acids, i want to say sulfuric acid? anyway, the guy was lucky that the only casualty was his hoodie becoming tie-dye. professor took a picture of the broken bottle pieces to send to whoever was responsible for that type of stuff.
Apologies if this is a naive question, but why are labs dealing with dangerous chemicals still using open-face hoods instead of sealed gloveboxes?
As a grad student who works with and maintains an inert glovebox for her work... they're an expensive PITA
Wait, TX does not have its own OSHA-approved state safety program. Then how come this exempts "public schools in TX" from complying with OSHA Laboratory Standard 29 CFR 1910.1450? I'm confused
Ikr I did not get that lol.
States rights. Technically If it doesn’t go across state lines the State can tell the Federal Government to stay out of it. It’s how States legalize Marijuana when it’s federally illegal.
Texas tends to have its own totally separate system that has its own rules. For example, the Texas Water Commission enforces Texas laws concerning all water quality and pollution issues. Federal laws will apply to the vast majority of Texas processes, but Texas laws are an additional level. So they may mean that Texas lacks a department that duplicates OSHA enforcement and leaves that to the feds.
The US Congress has never amended the OSHA Act of 970 to include Public Education Institutions.
Planning, PPE, and proper understanding of the hazards of the materials and processes and equipment you are dealing with usually are the safest plan, but, in research an overabundance of caution must be used because there may not be enough information about your doing.
I think the problem is blunt stupidity and nonexistent reading comprehension skills.
Oof. You do not mess with dimethylmercury. RIP lady.
But she aced all her lecture exams?!!
This case always makes me so sad cuz her family really never got any justice for it and the professor took very minimal responsibility for his role in the accident. Safety in his lab is his purview, but he sure doesn’t seem to see it that way.
Found out about all of these first through In The Pipeline.
One thing, I have a good point, Tbh, she forgot to put science suit and goggles before test, but, she did not pay attention
7:56
chubbyemu stans wya
The nature of experimentation runs at odds with a prescribed safety program in that, all aspects (or outcomes) of the operations cannot always be reasonably predicted. The environment in which the experiment is conducted can be controlled, as well as the personal protective gear worn by the researcher. Also, many of these operations that involve physically mixing chemical substances could be performed with robotic devices, lessening the danger of burns and explosions to personnel.
El video es muy interesante, principalmente para hacer conciencia de la importancia que tiene el buen manejo de los materiales dentro de un laboratorio de química, así como el implemento de las medidas de seguridad sugeridas por investigadores. Conocer el material con que se trabaja (químicos corrosivos e inflamables) para prevenir accidentes o en caso contrario contrarrestar daños. Usar el equipo y ropa adecuados, así como acatar con sumo cuidado cada instrucción y evitar cualquier desastre.
Improper personal protection equipment, handling highly unstable chemicals required stringent safety protocols, including a fire watch ,flame retardant clothing
This is what happens when chemistry classes main focus is math and equations rather than proper lab techniques
Severe burns are an absolutely horrible & agonising death!
OH&S training should be an absolute priority!
If you live, you'll have a good deal of pain until you die or something else.
1. What safety rules did the 23 year old research assistant at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) not follow?
2. What safety rule did Professor Karen Wetterhan not follow while completing experiments at Dartmouth College?
3. What safety rules did the two graduate students at Texas Tech University not follow?
I've worked in construction/commercial painting and have seen many chemical accidents happen, once I even got DCM in my eyeball. Funny to me that we focus on these few freak accidents while people are dying everyday just trying to refinish their home/vehicles and im OSHA 30 certified
@@junkman8742 It is interesting the things sold over the counter to untrained, unknowning laypeople, isn't it? How to read labels and more importantly, how to THINK about safety is possibly something that should be in high schools, not just once, but throughout.
I once damaged a bunch of equipment and coated an entire vacuum apparatus in fine soot by assembling it before all the solvent vapors from cleaning had flashed off and they ignited by a hot wire vacuum gauge. Luckily it was a very strong apparatus and contained the explosion and no one was hurt. Too often labwork is done by two groups of people: new grads and interns who don't understand how badly things can go wrong, and seasoned experts who think they are immune to rookie mistakes. I recommend this channel to a lot of my colleagues for presenting critical information in an engaging format.
I think Chubbyemu covered the Dartmouth Accident in a video.
would like to ask some questions about the solutions by apply all the hierarchy of control to prevent similar accidents in future of Texas Tech Lessons that happened on 7 January 2010.
Thank you
Pulls plunger out the back of syringe holding pyrophiric chemical in a hood with an open container orf flammable solvent while not wearing any PPE….sounds like training issue. Her professor is to blame
Of course, people are stupid af. They don't READ, they don't COMPREHEND and they can't spell. They fail to follow instructions at every turn.
"He suffered inquires to other parts of his body".
I think that is the polite way to say he blew his Johnson off.
Reminds me Dexter Laboratory.
In experiments sometimes things just go wrong and you have to be prepared for any eventuality. One of our science teachers recalled an incident when she was preparing the test where you put Lithium, Sodium and Potassium in a large bowl with some water, she was testing it out when she was back blown into a cupboard. Must have been a dodgy batch of one of the metals.
This documentary is ridiculous, completely preventable.
I still remember I save the whole lab from a big fire or explosion, it is in summer vacation, my collegue was doing flame fuel cell, but he forget to look for the flame, and the flame burn out along the wire to the machine, a GC. We have a lot of hydrogen cylinder in the lab! I just see this at that very moment, and put the fire down using fire extinguisher! I think I have saved the whole buliding and many lifes, I come from china and now a postdoc in US
This js a family of over achiever.. Amazing beauties
One of the better videos, but like the instructionals for physical safety that are recommended herein, there should be highlights throughout the video for untrained listeners for when they might be listening to bullshit. My warning alerts sounded a few times.
How hard is it to get full coverage PPE like aprons, face Shields and long sleeve gloves
Not even remotely. And I’m wary enough to go to Granger and get them myself. Common use PPE is frequently lacking in quality at manufacture, never mind after frequent use and lackluster care and maintenance.
It requires the lab's supervising professor to fill out a requisition, and spend some of the research budget.
What was a young girl doing in a dangerous lab environment?
She was a 23 year old adult, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. After completing that course of study, with progressively more laboratory experience, she *should* have had sufficient knowledge to do a proper risk assessment of her work procedures...
As a student of 18, I worked as a lab aide - somewhat less responsible than her position - handling some rather interesting chemicals, with minimal supervision. I was aware of the risks of the materials with which I was working, and always wore proper PPE. I was properly trained. Others were not always.
It's not only an issue of age, but attitude.
However, even at top rated universities, there is a sad situation where some percentage of the students do not internalize safe work practices and risk assessments. The research culture needs to be much less tolerant of unsafe work, and much more emphatic about safe work practices.
I would have thought you would keep something like tert-Butyllithium, under nitrogen...
wouldn't argon be better as a heavier-than-air compound? I mean, I would think nitrogen would just flow away.
I'm not a chemist but I would presume you would need a sealed glove box (rather than a fume hood) to contain the nitrogen or whatever inert gas you would use to prevent combustion. Otherwise I could see someone inhaling a bit and potentially becoming hypoxic, judgement would probably slip leading to a higher risk of incident.
Karen and the mercury compound were featured in another channels video by Chubbyemu-
"Description
I make medical videos, telling stories in medicine. These are variations on cases I, or my colleagues, have seen in the past. The main goal of these videos are to tell a story about people, as we each have a unique story to tell."
The SDS sheet the chemical co provided saying to use latex gloves was accurate, but you DO have to buy QUALITY gloves and only use them ONCE, I suspect karen either had cheap ones supplied by the University, or she took them off more than once and re-used them.
I cant imagine why anyone would feel the need to mess with dimethylmercury in the first place!
Death by dimethymercury is hideous. The professor's death was tragic.
If you'd like to participate in a community that shares terrible chemistry safety practices and other chemical shenanigans you should join us over at That Chemist. I'm totally not paid or a sponsor or anything, but I love sharing near miss lab stories with a supportive community!
They should have had enclosed chambers with gloves in holes to work with the chemical, and the chamber should have been filled with something like pure nitrogen or argon.
It was a perchorate, so it contained its own oxidizer. I doubt an intert gas atmosphere would have made any difference.
@@russlehman2070 he was referring to the indian girl who handled pyrochemical that was exposed to oxygen
@@greyfox3755 yep, though if you read anything from experienced chemists you'll know the procedure she was using is pretty standard, the lack of safety equipment not so much.
@@darthkarl99 I think that I can guess why. The money that funds the research is fiat currency. So, the students are under pressure to perform under substandard conditions to cut costs. We should blame the bank notes.
@@henryng439 When i say experienced chemists i'm including industrial chemists and the like working in company, not academic labs.
From what i've read short of somthing chatastrophic like the plunger failure it fairly safe as the amount you can squeeze out through the needle end will generally burn up before it can set anything on fire. It takes a very large spill or direct application to fairly flammable material to get it to start a fire.
The situation that occurred is about as bad as a spill of it can get in terms of ability to set things on fire, proper protective clothing and proper safety precautions like removing nearby solvents makes even that a relatively mild accident.
Should have done it in a flame hood with a positive pressure inert atmosphere. Alot of people on here talk about oh well how stupid it was to do it, but you know this process of grinding explosive materials into smaller granules is a common practice, its also how you make black powder. You add water to the mixture though to prevent explosion.
There is a BIG difference between gunpowder and modern, primary explosives... The first one isn't even a "real" explosive as it will just burn quickly, but not detonate unless you put it in a confined space. Perchlorates (and other primary explosives) will explode and send pieces of whatever they where sitting on flying. So yeah, grinding 5g of primary explosives is just as stupid as everyone else is saying... When it goes off, your hand will probably either just disintegrate or be filled with the fragments of your mortar.
Now to the "When": If a "close relative" of the substance you are working with (NHN) has a friction sensitivity of 16 N (when grinding it with a pestle), it is a rather stupid idea to put it anywhere near a mortar as you will exceed this force quite easily. So: The idea of grinding it was extremely dumb, as is any idea of grinding a new explosive substance for which no datasheets exist.
And yes, no one knew if that new compound would be explosive, but if you are combining two known explosives (Nickel hydrazine and a perchlorate) it's a good idea to handle it like it IS in fact explosive.
Oh, and just to add to your misunderstanding/lack of knowledge: It would have exploded under an inert atmosphere since it already had the oxygen needed to decompose (explode) in form of the perchlorate (a Chlorine atom with four(!!) oxygen atoms attached to it). Nearly every explosive substances (if not all) have their own oxygen needed for decomposition as it would take to long to get oxygen out of the air, thereby slowing down the explosion and making it "just" highly flammable.
@@eulemitbeule5426 oxygen is one of the most reactive things known. its what gives acids there power virtually all acids contain oxygen.
ammonium nitrate is fairly safe to handle and will simply burn vigorously if ignited unless its mixed with fuel and contained. on its own its a strong oxidiser. ammonia it self is flammable the main danger though is its highly toxic and corrosive.
there was a incident a few yrs back involving a truck rollover and ammonium nitrate when they tried to extinguish the fire it exploded. had they just spread it out and let it burn itself out it probably wouldnt have detonated. it completely destroyed a fire truck 2 cop cars and a rail bridge that was near by.
@@chrisforgan731 Ammonium nitrate is believed to build up pressure when smoldering in a piled up condition, as was the case in West, TX and Beirut, Lebanon. As the AN gets hot, it becomes less stable, and that can be very dangerous.
Remember, that for explosion, your fire also needs confinement and pressure. A trailer load of AN can rapidly build up to an explosive condition when burning.
Very early irrigation / deluge with copius amounts of water will dissolve and disperse the fuel supply. In addition to the heat removed by evaporation of the fire fighting water, dissolving ammonium nitrate is endothermic, and chills its surroundings.
That said, there are frequently conditions where the fire is already too energetic, and the AN thus is too unstable to approach, and then the proper method is to pull back to a safe distance and let it burn / explode.
I would not want to be the janitor for laboratories.
For real tho chemist Dr. Chemsley
thank you
If they were concerned by batch to batch differences in the explosive, they could prepare it in small batches, mix with solvent and combine the batches at the end maybe.
What about when they handle pyrophoric chems use syringes that the plungers don’t come out of. Or like how they have the pre measured pipettes. 🤷♂️
For larger than 5-10 mL of something like tBuLi she should have cannulated it into a flame-dried graduated cylinder under nitrogen then cannulated it into her reaction. That was standard procedure in my graduate lab.
I missed the experiment with safety video
I bet it was ether. It's always old ether exploding.
Let's have a shower with tert-Butyllithium because why not
Alessio Ark Sonaglio nah take H2S or Rubidium or Cesium instead :D
*bathroom sets on fire*
DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT LASER WITH REMAINING EYEBALL!
🔥 People make mistakes and die, everyday!
wow