<p>Good luck to your daughter, soozie!</p>
<p>My husband, who works in a physics lab at a national laboratory, thinks that machinist work should only be done by trained machinists who just do that specific job. It is a job that requires specialized training and is quite dangerous. He says the excellent machinists he knows do brilliant work, are very experienced, but still have frequent minor injuries. It seems to me that an undergrad, whose experience in this area couldn’t be very extensive, who has myriad other obligations, who is working alone and late at night, possibly sleep-deprived, would be at high risk for accidental injury. It may be that she was not alone, but I would assume that if she hadn’t been alone, someone else would have witnessed the accident and immediately called for help. That didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Let real machinists do machinist work in all labs. Let the scientists do their jobs, creating and doing experiments.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the really exceptional machinist, tool & die makers and the like are a dying breed. Your H is correct. They are excepetional people and what they do is an art and many are unbelievable craftsmen(women). My father a former engineering executive would often talk about how amazing some of those people were. And in the day they garnered the salaries commensurate with their experience and ability. It was those types of dangerous jobs that gave rise to the union, to OSHA, to EPC and many oversight organizations. Those types of jobs (and the people that do them) have become incredibly devalued and declassed in our generation. “Smart kids” no longer want to do these types of jobs and companies don’t want to invest in the training… </p>
<p>This is a tragic situation and unfortunately educational insitutions whether they are K-12 or college level often fall through the “cracks” of some of the regulatory agencies for inspections from building to safety. This is often unknown in the general community, I certainly never knew this until my H told me when I asked why he wasn’t involved years ago when a new middle school was being built in the community. When he told me I was very, very surprised. It is interesting that OSHA is looking into this incident. I have no knowledge of the scope of their regulatory responsibilities or influence in the college setting. It would be interesting to know.</p>
<p>There seems to be a few common themes that have occurred, at least with the most high profile cases:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Accidents occur late at night or in otherwise unsupervised conditions where the student is working alone</p></li>
<li><p>The root cause of the accident is related to the fact that the student was acting in serious violation of established safety rules and procedures (intentionally or not is not always known, but what they were doing was clearly wrong)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Both of these issures require better review by schools. </p>
<p>However another point that needs to be thrown out there, even though it’s not one some people like to talk about is the element of personal responsibly here. </p>
<p>When working in a lab environment where every day is full of different procedures, some perhaps never done by anyone before, safety training always focuses on pointing out that the person doing the experiment is ultimately responsible for taking the necessary measures to make sure it is safe and done in accordance with published practices. </p>
<p>Schools can make all the rules they want and give all the training 10x over, but at the end of the day if someone still makes a decision to cut corners or not follow safety rules and then gets hurt/killed as a result…</p>
<p>True and perhaps the outcome of this will shed light on the entire situation. Once companies or institutions have done everything necessary to enable people to work in a safe environment is it always about personal responsibility. I worked a few years ago for a company that had a number of different labs and plant environments. The company was huge on safety and had a record to go along with that both in their technical centers and in the plants. </p>
<p>The office was also intolerant or people who flaunted rules and those people found themselves on strike one on their way out the door. I worked in the offices and we were told to wear “cut gloves” if we were using a box cutter to open a package and cut gloves were everywhere. When I went to work there I thought that was the silliest thing I had every heard, but it spoke volumes about the culture. “Put a cut glove on” would ring out of someone saw someone grabbing a box cutter to open a box of literature. The “culture” of higher ed and really any company and how they view these labs is also an aspect of this story.</p>
<p>[Shop</a> safety questioned after death | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/15/shop-safety-questioned-after-death/]Shop”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/15/shop-safety-questioned-after-death/)</p>
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<p>And another one from the Yale Daily today:</p>
<p>[Safety</a> practices altered after death | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/17/safety-practices-altered-after-death/]Safety”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/17/safety-practices-altered-after-death/)</p>
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<p>and from a few days ago:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> to investigate accident | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/14/yale-osha-begin-investigations/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/14/yale-osha-begin-investigations/)</p>
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<p>soozievt: Links in post #26 and #27 clearly indicate lapse in safety procedures at Yale.</p>
<p>As a lab manager (pharmaceuticals) and a former college student in the sciences and as a former TA teaching labs, I do wonder how I survived my college labs physically intact. I have no doubt they had to eliminate many of the lab assignments in later years due to increased regulations and the serious health threat they posed (working with benzene, working with human blood). And my number one goal as a TA was to keep the undergraduates alive during lab. I had to put out many fires during those days (undergrads don’t always pay attention).</p>
<p>I had the same goal in my professional life, trying to keep the new hires alive, as they trained in the lab. Some of them did quit, as they learned all the safety rules, and the time involved in maintaining safety each day. They often left the sciences completely.</p>
<p>For many years I taught a class for the state on laboratory acquired infections. It doesn’t make the headlines, but we lose scientists every where, not just at Yale, from infections obtained in the lab. And I have learned through inspections that our medical labs, private and public, are not maintained according to the CDC guidelines. There are many labs I would refuse to work in.</p>
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<p>Not sure why you directed that to me, POIH. I haven’t said whether Yale or the student was at fault. I commented that it is being investigated and that you could not claim to know as you did immediately when the news of the accident was released. Perhaps the procedures were not followed by the school or not stringent enough. Perhaps the student didn’t follow instructions. Perhaps it was a freak thing and every current procedure was followed. Perhaps they need to change their policies and procedures (this often happens when an accident occurs). I never said whether Yale was to blame or not, but rather one should not assume and let the investigation play out. Sometimes there is justifiable blame. I don’t know yet in this case until the facts are all released. And sometimes (speaking generally here, not this incident), no matter even if every precaution is taken, accidents occur in life in a split second, and it is natural to want to place blame. All accidents are not avoidable. Some are. I’ll reserve judgement on this accident when I hear the results of the investigation. Some things are starting to come out. Your assigning of blame was before any investigation had even begun. Even if it turns out that Yale is to blame (remains to be seen), I would still not agree with you to point fingers without FIRST gathering the facts. That is what others were saying to you in the other thread too. </p>
<p>But what was really offensive is your assumption that it should not be expected to happen at an HYPSM school, but it might as a lesser college, or that students at a lesser college may not know better. None of that applies, sorry. No matter where this occurred, it is not only tragic, but policies and procedures need to be reexamined and students need to be fully aware, at ANY college. HYPSM is no different in this one regard. Are there differences between HYPSM and a community college in other respects? Of course. But not so much with safety and protocols. I would expect that of any college.</p>
<p>Interesting article from today’s Stanford Daily.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> death, PRL fire prompt new machine shop rules | Stanford Daily](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/04/29/yale-death-prl-fire-prompt-new-machine-shop-rules/]Yale”>Yale death, PRL fire prompt new machine shop rules)</p>
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<p>Bumping this up…</p>
<p>[BC</a> student hurt in lab accident - Boston.com](<a href=“http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-26/news/29706163_1_lab-safety-chemistry-student-lab-accident]BC”>http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-26/news/29706163_1_lab-safety-chemistry-student-lab-accident)</p>
<p>Again, the accident happened when the student was working ALONE in the lab. Luckily, she was not seriously hurt, but her actions after the accident hint that she was in shock and not thinking clearly about what steps needed to be taken after the explosion.</p>
<p>Science majors: please, please do not run potentially dangerous experiments when you are in the labs alone on a weekend or late at night.</p>