<p>The problem with school labs is probably that there are so many people using them at any given time and with supervision that can range from great to lax, you can have problems. When I was in school, the labs seemed pretty well run, they were very good with safety, especially in organic chemistry where the chemicals were all up there on the list of cancer causing elements and so forth and the LA’s were pretty good at keeping an eye on us. A lot of it depends on who is running the labs, the guy running them where I went to school was a pretty intense dude, and he had serious background from what I understand, had run labs at major research facilities and such, it could be in other places they aren’t as rigorous. Put it this way, if they saw us without aprons and goggles, if they saw loose sleeves, not wearing gloves, leaning over something being heated, long hair not tied back, etc there would be hell to pay…</p>
<p>Though we used to think it had to do with the irony of where the labs were. The chemistry labs were in Brown building at NYU, which was the site of the triangle shirtwaist factory fire that took 140 lives.</p>