Lab Safety Awareness

On December 23, 2008, Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji was performing a fairly common procedure with a pyrophoric material in a UCLA Chemistry lab when some accidentally spilled onto her polyester sweater and ignited. Over 40% of her body was burned and she died 19 days later.

A subsequent investigation by California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) lead to citations and fines for inadequate training, improper use of protective clothing, failure to correct safety violations noted on the October, 2008 inspection performed by UCLA’s EHS Office, and non-existent records of training on the specific procedure being performed. Currently, criminal and civil charges are being considered against the PI for wrongful death.

Labs are extremely diverse spaces that may contain many different types of potentially hazardous materials or equipment. Numerous other incidents have occurred recently that have not received as much attention as the UCLA incident, but, should be reminders as to what can happen in our labs and what we can do to prevent it or minimize the possibility of it happening.

Listed below is a sampling of publicized events and links to the official reports: All descriptions are links and can be accessed by using Control + Click to follow link.

• Nitric acid spill injures Boise State lab manager (March, 2009)
• Researcher mixes two unidentified acids and winds up with broken flasks and spilled chemicals at the University of Maryland (March, 2009)
• Chemical reaction in storage cabinet leads to explosion at Boston University (June, 2009)
• Alcohol ignites, fire spreads to plastics in lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (June, 2009)
• University of British Columbia, Okanagan, student burned by acid wasn’t following safety rules (added 8/28/2009)
• Two students burned in an ethanol fire at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne (added 09/14/2009)
• Fire in University of Colorado, Boulder, chemistry building due to “long-term experiment” (added 10/30/2009)
• Mercury spill at McLennan Community College, in Texas (added 10/30/2009)
• Hydrogen leak at Boston University (added 10/30/2009)
• Nitric acid and potassium cyanide spill at Georgia Tech sends three graduate students to the hospital  (added 10/30/2009)

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Last Modified: January 14, 2010
Please forward all questions about this site to: Denise Monteleone