Chemical Hazard Assessment and Risk Minimization

Dan Olsen, CHMM Author

04/26/2017 Added

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Those who conduct chemical reactions or work with varied and numerous hazardous chemicals will find this colloquium particularly informative.

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[00:00:01.560]Well, hello, everyone.
[00:00:03.067]Environmental Health and Safety
[00:00:04.491]and the Office of Research and Economic Development
[00:00:07.291]would like to welcome you all
[00:00:09.011]to today's Laboratory Safety Colloquium:
[00:00:11.908]Hazard Assessment and Risk Minimization.
[00:00:14.691]This series of colloquia is offered in recognition
[00:00:17.731]of the commitment by faculty and staff
[00:00:19.861]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
[00:00:22.060]to assure a safe and healthy environment
[00:00:24.520]for teaching and carrying out meaningful research.
[00:00:27.851]Couple housekeeping things first.
[00:00:30.099]I think you all got a handout.
[00:00:31.640]There are three handouts.
[00:00:32.731]One is a copy of the safe operating procedure
[00:00:36.731]of the same title as the presentation,
[00:00:39.541]one is a copy of our poster, globally harmonized system,
[00:00:44.051]and one is a survey.
[00:00:45.741]If you could please complete this survey at the end
[00:00:48.451]and leave that on the table, it would be appreciated.
[00:00:51.749]Dan has cards of his at the back table as well,
[00:00:56.392]so if you decide you want to pick one of those up
[00:00:59.958]feel free to do that at the end.
[00:01:03.552]I will be passing around signup sheets,
[00:01:06.541]please try and print,
[00:01:08.091]and our speaker today is Dan Olsen,
[00:01:11.720]which many of you know.
[00:01:13.861]Dan is a certified hazardous materials
[00:01:17.981]management specialist, CHMM,
[00:01:21.040]currently working at UNL's Environmental Health
[00:01:23.530]and Safety Department.
[00:01:25.048]So, Dan, take it away.
[00:01:27.399]Okay.
[00:01:28.448](applause) Oh great, great.
[00:01:33.390]Today we're gonna talk about Hazard Assessments
[00:01:34.957]and Risk Minimazations,
[00:01:35.878]a topic that is near and dear to my heart,
[00:01:37.728]and I'm sure by the time we get done today
[00:01:39.350]it will be just as near and dear to yours.
[00:01:42.830]Yeah, bit of a laugh on that one.
[00:01:44.508]Okay, well what about me?
[00:01:46.926]Who in here ever raised pigs?
[00:01:48.576]You raised pigs?
[00:01:49.409]You raised pigs?
[00:01:50.760]Do you still raise pigs?
[00:01:52.171]Yeah, our family does.
[00:01:53.033]Oh, your family does?
[00:01:54.673]You glad for the experience that you got to have
[00:01:55.733]when you had to raise pigs?
[00:01:57.260]Scooping manure and flies, and sortin' hogs,
[00:02:01.060]and when they get out you gotta get 'em back in, right?
[00:02:03.311]Yeah.
[00:02:04.271]That's what I did growing up.
[00:02:05.751]Y'know I'm really glad I had the experience,
[00:02:07.159]but I'm really glad I don't have to do it anymore, either.
[00:02:10.338]So I grew up as a pig farmer,
[00:02:11.549]I graduated from Iowa State University
[00:02:13.096]with a degree in biochemistry.
[00:02:15.418]My first real job
[00:02:16.728]was with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources,
[00:02:19.058]just as the new underground storage tank rules came out
[00:02:21.336]back in the late '80s.
[00:02:23.088]I also did emergency response there.
[00:02:24.738]Well, I didn't have degrees in either of those areas,
[00:02:27.389]so of course they sent me off to training,
[00:02:29.117]and what I learned,
[00:02:31.357]getting my emergency response training,
[00:02:33.098]is that they were trying to scare us to death.
[00:02:35.229]So we saw fires and explosions and spills of acids
[00:02:39.408]and things like that,
[00:02:40.804]and one of the things they kept trying to drill into
[00:02:43.218]emergency responders is that
[00:02:45.125]before you go into a situation
[00:02:47.446]you gotta know what it is you're dealing with.
[00:02:49.518]You gotta know what it's hazards are,
[00:02:50.698]and you gotta know how to protect yourself.
[00:02:53.058]So of course when I came to university,
[00:02:54.989]every chemical I encountered picking up waste
[00:02:57.688]was a new chemical, so guess what?
[00:02:59.138]I spent a lot of time reading safety data sheets.
[00:03:01.069]Just last week, I advised a researcher on colchicine.
[00:03:05.259]What's colchicine?
[00:03:06.342]I don't know, I've never heard of it before,
[00:03:08.349]so I went to the safety data sheet.
[00:03:09.360]Dan, you have to enunciate or talk louder.
[00:03:13.170]What's that?
[00:03:14.410]Talk louder.
[00:03:15.481]Talk louder, okay, sorry.
[00:03:18.145]Thanks, Julie!
[00:03:19.817]Okay, so, I still read safety data sheets,
[00:03:22.676]so I'm practicing what I preach.
[00:03:24.646]So I started here in the university in 1990,
[00:03:26.657]my first job was basically hazardous waste.
[00:03:29.806]I've also done lab safety.
[00:03:32.086]I've done water quality,
[00:03:33.036]we're talking water discharges, not drinking water.
[00:03:35.537]I've done air quality,
[00:03:37.025]and of course I've done emergency response.
[00:03:41.545]Today what we're gonna cover
[00:03:43.356]is why this is important to you.
[00:03:45.876]We're gonna talk about the concept of hazard,
[00:03:47.425]We're gonna go through a couple of examples.
[00:03:49.585]We're gonna talk about how to minimize risk,
[00:03:53.345]again we're gonna go through examples of it.
[00:03:55.265]We're gonna do a case study,
[00:03:56.465]and then after all that
[00:03:58.054]we're gonna draw some conclusions from the whole thing.
[00:04:01.014]So this is what most people think of
[00:04:03.054]when they think of hazard assessments and risk minimization.
[00:04:05.831]They think someplace in there a miracle occurs,
[00:04:08.414]and I try to tell people, it's a lot simpler than you think.
[00:04:10.953]Don't overthink it, it's very straightforward.
[00:04:15.650]Let's talk about the legal: why it's important to you.
[00:04:19.939]This is all based on occupational health
[00:04:22.143]and safety administration regulations,
[00:04:24.394]so it's a federal and it's a state law,
[00:04:27.014]so based on those laws
[00:04:29.276]you have a responsibility in part to,
[00:04:31.364]whoops, oh, two of 'em,
[00:04:33.075]comply with the employer's safety and health rules,
[00:04:36.604]report and hazards immediately to your supervisor.
[00:04:39.244]Now it doesn't necessarily be just a hazard to you.
[00:04:42.156]If your coworker Bob is doing something that's dangerous
[00:04:44.681]and you tell Bob "hey, that's dangerous,"
[00:04:46.004]and Bob says "hey, leave me alone,"
[00:04:47.276]then you gotta talk to Bob's boss and say
[00:04:48.913]"Bob is doing something dangerous."
[00:04:52.425]You've gotta report any job-related illnesses
[00:04:54.905]or injuries to your supervisor.
[00:04:58.454]If you supervise others, you'll be responsible,
[00:05:01.893]and this includes PIs who have graduate students,
[00:05:04.574]they have this responsibility,
[00:05:07.516]to provide training,
[00:05:09.054]correct improper work practices,
[00:05:10.923]so as a PI if you walk into a lab
[00:05:13.494]and you've got somebody working in the lab,
[00:05:15.123]working with something that's dangerous,
[00:05:16.422]and they're not wearing their proper PPE,
[00:05:18.642]you have a responsibility to say
[00:05:20.084]"Sean, you gotta go put on the right PPE
[00:05:22.134]"before you come into the lab."
[00:05:23.996]Discipline employees as needed,
[00:05:26.054]that's another thing you got.
[00:05:27.284]Now let's talk about the practical side,
[00:05:28.614]I just told you the legal side.
[00:05:29.836]Let's talk about the practical side.
[00:05:32.134]You wanna protect yourself,
[00:05:33.025]you'd like to go home at night
[00:05:34.364]in the same condition you came to the job in the morning.
[00:05:38.094]I've had professors actually tell me
[00:05:40.316]that "we're just careful with everything,"
[00:05:42.697]and I thought, "really?"
[00:05:44.804]So let's talk about two things
[00:05:45.876]that we're careful with everything for.
[00:05:47.737]Engine oil versus nitroglycerine.
[00:05:49.365]Both are oily liquids, right?
[00:05:51.766]Do they have the same hazards?
[00:05:53.875]Anybody?
[00:05:54.916]How dangerous is engine oil?
[00:05:58.865]'Scuse me?
[00:05:59.944]It gets combustible if you heat it up enough,
[00:06:01.766]but is it really toxic?
[00:06:02.846]No.
[00:06:03.755]If it's on the floor you could slip and fall down.
[00:06:05.974]What's that?
[00:06:07.244]It's toxic if you eat it.
[00:06:08.574]Well it can be, yes.
[00:06:10.166]What about nitroglycerine?
[00:06:11.284]Anybody know any hazrds of nitroglycerine?
[00:06:14.806]Is it extremely shock sensitive?
[00:06:17.356]Yeah, fantastically shock sensitive.
[00:06:19.166]Matter of fact it's so shock sensitive
[00:06:20.665]that in order for them to actually be able to use it
[00:06:22.755]they have to mix it with clay,
[00:06:23.972]that's where dynamite comes from.
[00:06:25.836]Otherwise it's too shock sensitive to handle.
[00:06:29.156]So they don't have the same hazard.
[00:06:31.236]Do you want to work with engine oil in milliliter amounts?
[00:06:35.116]No.
[00:06:35.985]I won't work for you.
[00:06:37.126]How about a liter of nitroglycerine?
[00:06:39.364]Would that scare you?
[00:06:40.705]Yeah.
[00:06:42.442]So whether you're aware of it or not,
[00:06:44.254]you actually are assessing hazards,
[00:06:45.894]but you're assessing hazards for the chemicals you know.
[00:06:49.094]So what I'm saying,
[00:06:49.927]and you're also minimizing risks,
[00:06:51.494]so what I'm saying is let's apply this
[00:06:53.934]to things you don't know about.
[00:06:55.323]How do you get it done?
[00:06:58.545]So this is what we're gonna talk about today.
[00:07:00.625]So, we have to differentiate a couple terms here.
[00:07:05.052]Hazard versus risk.
[00:07:07.662]Hazards are innate to a chemical,
[00:07:10.812]it doesn't matter whether it's toxicity,
[00:07:12.060]flammability, corrosivity.
[00:07:13.681]Benzyne is a known human carcinogen.
[00:07:15.412]It doesn't matter whether I have a milliter of benzyne,
[00:07:18.172]or I have a liter of benzyne,
[00:07:19.622]they are both the same carcinogens,
[00:07:21.932]so they have the same hazard.
[00:07:25.041]Come on, gotta do something.
[00:07:27.290]Okay, there are two kind of hazards.
[00:07:29.830]There are health hazards and physical hazards,
[00:07:31.990]and we'll talk about both.
[00:07:34.102]Risk depends on how likely the hazard is to cause harm.
[00:07:39.691]So we talk about gasoline.
[00:07:41.022]500 gallons of gasoline has much greater potential
[00:07:43.580]to cause much greater risk than a gallon,
[00:07:45.980]it can cause much greater harm.
[00:07:49.321]So, again, let's talk about health hazards.
[00:07:52.430]Now in order for something to be a health hazard,
[00:07:56.350]somehow you have to be able to get exposed to it,
[00:07:59.220]so, and I've got people in here who know the answer to this,
[00:08:02.148]what are the routes of exposure?
[00:08:05.380](audience member talking)
[00:08:06.881]'Scuse me?
[00:08:07.714][Audience Members] Skin.
[00:08:08.547]You've got skin, that's one, so you got skin absorption.
[00:08:11.206]Inhaled.
[00:08:12.039]You can inhale it, that's right.
[00:08:13.705]Directly into the bloodstream.
[00:08:15.076]Well, how would you do that,
[00:08:16.497]how would you get it directly into your bloodstream?
[00:08:18.259]Injection.
[00:08:19.092]It could be injected.
[00:08:20.304]Okay and there's, let's see, there's one more.
[00:08:23.563]Ingestion.
[00:08:24.396]You could eat it.
[00:08:25.355]Now, I know people don't go around eating chemicals,
[00:08:27.414]but if you don't wash your hands
[00:08:28.494]after working with chemicals you can transfer the chemical
[00:08:31.624]to your hand and eat it that way.
[00:08:33.374]If it's a dust, you could breathe it in
[00:08:35.915]and it could hit your mucus membranes and get caught up
[00:08:38.374]and you might accidentally swallow it.
[00:08:40.824]So we've gone through,
[00:08:44.926]we've gone through all of those.
[00:08:46.433]Of those four routes of exposure,
[00:08:48.772]which one typically has the greatest hazard to it?
[00:08:52.622](audience members talking)
[00:08:57.485]Anybody?
[00:08:58.454]Wanna say it loud enough?
[00:08:59.686]Inhalation.
[00:09:00.774]Inhalation.
[00:09:01.824]That's because your lungs are built
[00:09:03.984]to exchange gases and vapors,
[00:09:07.102]so anything you inhale can be taken by your body.
[00:09:11.014]Your lungs are designed to do that,
[00:09:12.155]also your lungs are very sensitive tissues.
[00:09:14.486]You breathe in something that's corrosive,
[00:09:15.884]a corrosive gas, and it's really gonna hurt your lungs.
[00:09:19.035]So, lungs tend to be the greatest hazard.
[00:09:21.494]What tends to be second?
[00:09:24.644]Ingestion.
[00:09:25.820]And this is kinda debatable,
[00:09:26.979]but I tend to think of ingestion
[00:09:29.024]because your digestive track is designed to absorb things.
[00:09:32.292]Some folks might say skin, and for me skin can be,
[00:09:36.473]but your skin's designed to keep what's
[00:09:38.481]on the outside of you outside of you,
[00:09:40.481]and what's on the inside of you inside of you,
[00:09:41.875]so it's intended to do that.
[00:09:43.435]There are chemicals that will go right through your skin,
[00:09:45.784]and if you run into 'em then you need to be really cautious.
[00:09:50.494]And then of course you've got the ingestion,
[00:09:51.562]we talked about that,
[00:09:52.631]and then injection, again, that tends to be needle sticks,
[00:09:55.391]it could be chemicals.
[00:09:56.721]I knew of an incident where somebody was handling
[00:09:59.332]a high-pressure hydraulic hose,
[00:10:02.431]and he kinked it in his hand,
[00:10:04.810]and the hose broke and he squirted hydraulic fluid
[00:10:07.263]into his palm, that was an injection.
[00:10:11.721]Okay.
[00:10:14.380]Come on, do something.
[00:10:16.530]Okay.
[00:10:17.431]Now, what are the three states of matter?
[00:10:19.361]It's an easy one.
[00:10:20.772](audience talking)
[00:10:23.201]I usually have somebody say plasma.
[00:10:24.831](audience laughing)
[00:10:26.620]Anyway, we're not gonna talk about plasma.
[00:10:28.511]Of those three states, which one,
[00:10:31.079]say they're all equally hazardous,
[00:10:33.372]which state would tend to pose the greatest hazard.
[00:10:36.766][Audience Members] Gas.
[00:10:37.751]Yeah, it's gas.
[00:10:39.102]If it's a cylinder that's leaking,
[00:10:41.623]it's actually pushing gas into the air.
[00:10:44.102]You've got convection currents in a room,
[00:10:45.672]you got air handling systems that can move that gas places,
[00:10:48.131]right?
[00:10:49.059]So typically, gases are the greatest hazard.
[00:10:51.300]The next hazard would typically be a volatile liquid.
[00:10:53.923]Now try to think of a toxic volatile liquid,
[00:10:55.942]and I really couldn't come up with any.
[00:10:57.851]But again, it'd be something like ether volatility,
[00:11:01.530]so you open the container
[00:11:02.771]and it's rapidly evaporating into the room.
[00:11:04.563]And again, you can inhale it,
[00:11:06.233]it can be transmitted throughout a building.
[00:11:09.382]Solids, they can be hazards if they're finally ground
[00:11:12.322]and they become airborne,
[00:11:13.531]but for most of the area where we're working,
[00:11:15.673]we're working in labs,
[00:11:16.682]there isn't a lot of wind,
[00:11:17.531]there's not a lot to get the thing airborne.
[00:11:20.201]So that tends to be the least hazard
[00:11:21.843]of the three states of matter.
[00:11:25.210]Oh we already did that.
[00:11:26.531]So here's a summary.
[00:11:27.982]Exposure hazards, greatest to least are,
[00:11:29.883]we got those, right?
[00:11:31.913]Chemical states,
[00:11:33.131]gas, volatile liquid, non-volatile liquid, and a solid.
[00:11:36.633]Okay, so again, I'm going through this
[00:11:38.462]because for something to be a health hazard,
[00:11:40.883]you gotta be able to get exposed to it.
[00:11:43.433]So here are, these classes of health hazards,
[00:11:47.490]this is all based on the globally harmonized system
[00:11:50.665]passed by the United Nations,
[00:11:52.283]adopted by the United States,
[00:11:54.873]these are the classifications based on that system.
[00:11:58.665]If you've had your chemical safety training,
[00:12:00.913]you've read about all of these classes,
[00:12:03.334]you gotta have a working idea
[00:12:05.094]of what each of these things means, okay?
[00:12:07.593]Because when you read it on a safety data sheet,
[00:12:09.763]if you don't know what a sensitizer does,
[00:12:11.971]then it doesn't mean anything to you.
[00:12:14.324]Of those classes,
[00:12:15.675]which do you think poses the greatest hazard?
[00:12:22.964]Ah, you're afraid.
[00:12:24.446]I would vote for acute toxicity,
[00:12:27.217]primarily because if something's really, truly, toxic,
[00:12:30.286]you get exposed to it, you're dead now.
[00:12:32.964]Carcinogen, you get exposed to a carcinogen,
[00:12:35.154]maybe you don't get cancer for 30 years.
[00:12:37.257]But if you're dead today, you're dead today.
[00:12:39.315]Second one I would typically list to be skin corrosion.
[00:12:42.097]You get very strong corrosive material on your skin,
[00:12:45.006]and you don't do something about it almost immediately,
[00:12:47.465]you're gonna have a permanent scar,
[00:12:49.275]or it could be worse
[00:12:51.465]And I don't want you to discount the other toxicities,
[00:12:55.144]the other hazards here, but for me it's like
[00:12:57.446]getting a kind of a hierarchy in my head,
[00:13:00.446]as to what things should really get my attention.
[00:13:02.662]Skin irritation, if I see it I'm gonna pay attention to it,
[00:13:06.206]but it's not gonna get my attention like it is
[00:13:08.526]if I find out it's a highly toxic compound.
[00:13:12.225]Any questions on this?
[00:13:15.645]Okay.
[00:13:17.415]Here are the physical hazards,
[00:13:18.657]again this is the globally harmonized system
[00:13:21.297]of physical hazards,
[00:13:22.286]so I'm not going to go into detail on them,
[00:13:25.057]but again you should have a working definition
[00:13:27.914]in your head as to what a flammable liquid is.
[00:13:31.465]Of these physical hazard,
[00:13:33.137]which one do you think is the greatest hazard?
[00:13:38.865]What are you saying, Julie?
[00:13:40.425]I said the one you listed first.
[00:13:42.334]Oh, okay, I gave it away?
[00:13:45.365]Explosives!
[00:13:46.275]And for me it's explosives because
[00:13:47.977]that's something that can hurt you at a distance,
[00:13:50.086]and you're hurt now.
[00:13:51.377]They're not gonna hurt you in five years,
[00:13:52.782]they hurt you right now.
[00:13:55.875]Other ones that are not listed as explosives,
[00:13:59.126]but the nice thing about explosives
[00:14:01.044]is we don't have that many of them on campus,
[00:14:02.835]other things that can react basically like explosives
[00:14:06.166]are some of your organic peroxides,
[00:14:08.937]some of the self-reactive substances,
[00:14:10.414]they can basically detonate as well.
[00:14:13.255]Something else that tends to be pretty hazardous
[00:14:14.903]are your pyrophorics, right?
[00:14:16.124]Open the container, you got a fire.
[00:14:18.642]The substances in contact with water
[00:14:21.415]emit flammable gases,
[00:14:22.573]I don't like that.
[00:14:23.924]It used to be water-reactive, now it's got that title.
[00:14:28.564]There are certain chemicals, sodium hydride,
[00:14:31.503]spills out of a container, if the air is moist,
[00:14:33.654]there's enough moisture there
[00:14:34.722]for the sodium hydride to ignite.
[00:14:36.764]You would typically think about sodium metal,
[00:14:39.672]throw it some water, it buzzes around,
[00:14:41.455]and then you get hydrogen gas and it ignites.
[00:14:45.501]Okay.
[00:14:48.343]As you probably already know,
[00:14:49.346]the hazards are more complicated than that.
[00:14:51.825]For example, some chemicals are highly toxic,
[00:14:55.196]and they're gonna be called acute toxins,
[00:14:56.727]and other toxins are going to be just considered harmful
[00:14:59.239]even though they're gonna be listed as acute toxins,
[00:15:01.344]they're not nearly as dangerous as others.
[00:15:04.074]So how do you know how dangerous something is in its class?
[00:15:08.494]They divide them into categories, and let's see here,
[00:15:12.554]you go to...
[00:15:16.324]You go to the second page of the handout,
[00:15:22.242]it begins right at the bottom of that page.
[00:15:27.295]It begins at the bottom of the page with these categories.
[00:15:30.414]So the very first one, explosives,
[00:15:32.756]you go across there it says "unstable,"
[00:15:35.207]and it goes divisions 1.1 through 1.6.
[00:15:37.386]So which of those, do you think, is the most dangerous
[00:15:40.666]of those categories?
[00:15:41.655]Do you think it's unstable?
[00:15:42.916]Right.
[00:15:43.749]That's the most dangerous explosives category.
[00:15:46.735]You can't ship those.
[00:15:49.534]If you go to the next page,
[00:15:51.815]then you go to the top section of classes of health hazards,
[00:15:55.575]you've got acute, toxicity, oral, dermal, and inhalation.
[00:15:58.954]And this shows categories one through four,
[00:16:01.855]there's actually five so we're gonna have to update this.
[00:16:04.224]But category one is basically fatal,
[00:16:07.725]exposure can be fatal.
[00:16:09.134]So if you're going through a safety data sheet
[00:16:11.313]and you're running into category ones,
[00:16:14.194]or you're running into, y'know, type A, or division 1.1,
[00:16:18.594]you're dealing with the most dangerous chemical
[00:16:21.225]in that class.
[00:16:22.133]So an organic peroxide type A is really dangerous,
[00:16:26.573]and organic peroxide type F,
[00:16:28.405]there's very little danger there.
[00:16:30.693]So again, when you're looking at a safety data sheet,
[00:16:32.863]you can automatically begin to rank,
[00:16:34.743]ranking hazards on the chemicals you're looking at.
[00:16:39.863]In our office we decided let's help the campus
[00:16:44.343]kind of see how we see things,
[00:16:46.772]so we created something that we call exceptional hazards,
[00:16:50.279]and they're actually listed there
[00:16:51.230]on the bottom of page three.
[00:16:52.770]So it's explosives, unstable to divisions 1.1 through 1.3,
[00:16:56.850]basically they can just detonate.
[00:16:59.020]Organic Peroxides, A through C, not very many on campus.
[00:17:02.530]Any Pyrophoric, again, exposed to air it's gonna catch fire.
[00:17:06.039]Substances in contact with water emit flammable gases,
[00:17:09.359]self-reactives, and acute toxicity, category one.
[00:17:13.031]As you'll notice, every category, or every class up there,
[00:17:17.490]is a physical hazard, with the exception of acute toxicity.
[00:17:20.838]That's because all of those things can hurt you
[00:17:23.820]without you doing anything else to it.
[00:17:26.319]Just getting exposed to it it can hurt you.
[00:17:30.951]So we've talked about hazard assessment,
[00:17:32.610]let's talk about risk minimization,
[00:17:34.431]so I pulled this one down.
[00:17:41.031]And hopefully when we get done,
[00:17:42.180]risk minimization is a lot simpler than that.
[00:17:45.918]So in general, this is the order of preference
[00:17:48.410]for risk minimization.
[00:17:51.031]So you got, don't use the chemical.
[00:17:52.660]So instead of using the solvent stripper to clean the part,
[00:17:55.111]use sandpaper, or bead blaster.
[00:17:58.488]You substitute it with something less hazardous.
[00:18:00.359]Instead of the chlorinated salt for cleaning,
[00:18:02.039]you go with the high-flash aliphatic solvent,
[00:18:04.149]much less toxic.
[00:18:05.711]You isolate the chemical from people.
[00:18:07.351]It's in another room, or it's inside of a machine
[00:18:10.437]where you can't be exposed to it.
[00:18:13.010]You add engineering controls such as safety barriers
[00:18:15.679]or exhaust ventilation.
[00:18:17.359]Fume hoods, one of the most valuable tools
[00:18:19.871]you have in a laboratory.
[00:18:22.070]Use 'em.
[00:18:24.120]You adopt safe work practices, training, supervision,
[00:18:27.340]to minimize risks,
[00:18:29.170]and, last but not least, but last, is PPE.
[00:18:34.130]PPE is the last thing you use,
[00:18:36.082]now when you're working in a lab
[00:18:38.351]you're probably using multiple levels of this.
[00:18:40.928]You're using a fume hood, and you're wearing PPE, right?
[00:18:44.418]So these things don't work to the exclusion,
[00:18:46.621]but you're always looking at how can I make it safe?
[00:18:49.284]I'm always looking for can I do number one?
[00:18:50.914]If I can't do number one, can I go to number two?
[00:18:52.863]If I can't do that, can I go to number three?
[00:18:56.884]So where do you find this information?
[00:18:59.332]Safety data sheet.
[00:19:01.194]That's from the globally harmonized system,
[00:19:03.292]it used to be a material safety data sheet,
[00:19:05.044]now it's a safety data sheet.
[00:19:07.314]I just said that.
[00:19:08.914]It's been in effect for the last couple of years,
[00:19:10.711]so you're going to see safety data sheets
[00:19:12.474]changing the format,
[00:19:14.183]and if you buy new bottles,
[00:19:16.492]you'll see that the format of the labeling on the bottles
[00:19:18.234]is new and updated as well.
[00:19:20.372]Now pesticides that are subject to the
[00:19:22.404]Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act,
[00:19:26.823]they're not subject to OSHA labeling,
[00:19:30.003]but if you look up a pesticide,
[00:19:32.353]you can probably find a safety data sheet for it.
[00:19:36.754]So here's an example safety data sheet,
[00:19:39.023]that I start off with,
[00:19:39.856]and it's water, right?
[00:19:40.867]So you come down through there,
[00:19:43.821]and it talks about it here,
[00:19:45.311]and gets you that information there,
[00:19:46.621]and it comes down, they've got the address,
[00:19:49.050]and you've got the emergency phone numbers,
[00:19:50.610]and then it starts in
[00:19:51.443]with this hazard identification, right?
[00:19:53.522]And then you read something like,
[00:19:55.069]"this stuff will kill you."
[00:19:57.861]Then you think, well these safety data sheets,
[00:19:59.322]they're just so over-the-top,
[00:20:01.821]they're not useful to me at all.
[00:20:03.962]The situation is,
[00:20:05.409]the person who put together that safety data sheet
[00:20:07.460]doesn't know the context
[00:20:09.082]of how you're going to use the chemical.
[00:20:10.423]Are you going to use water in milliliter amounts,
[00:20:12.760]or in a gallon amount?
[00:20:14.333]Are you in a boat on the ocean?
[00:20:16.423]Now if you're in a boat on the ocean
[00:20:17.453]and your boat sinks, can water kill you?
[00:20:19.423]Yes, it's the context.
[00:20:20.863]So when I read safety data sheets and I see things like,
[00:20:23.493]"you've gotta wear fully encapsulating suits,"
[00:20:25.592]"use only intrinsically safe tools and equipment,"
[00:20:28.473]what they're telling me is, "there's a hazard here."
[00:20:30.893]Depending on how I'm going to use it,
[00:20:32.823]I need to pay attention to these hazards,
[00:20:34.322]I need to minimize it.
[00:20:38.342]So, let's look at a particular safety data sheet,
[00:20:41.253]this for hydrogen.
[00:20:44.642]Without going, what's it's greatest hazard?
[00:20:46.290]What do you think?
[00:20:49.447]Explosive.
[00:20:50.719]It's flammable. It's a category one flammable gas.
[00:20:55.039]So then the question is, is it always flammable,
[00:20:57.930]or is it just sometimes flammable?
[00:21:00.399]Where do you get it?
[00:21:01.733]Again, safety data sheet.
[00:21:04.162]So you get in there, and from the safety data sheet
[00:21:06.391]it says the lower explosive limit is 4%
[00:21:09.533]and the upper is 75.
[00:21:12.482]Sometimes they'll use lower and upper flammable range,
[00:21:16.246]or flammable range is used.
[00:21:19.139]Now, really important, this is 4 to 75% in air.
[00:21:23.629]When I mean air, I'm not really meaning
[00:21:25.568]the 78% nitrogen in the air, am I?
[00:21:29.309]I'm really talking about the 21% oxygen in the air,
[00:21:31.829]so keep that in mind.
[00:21:34.488]So what does it mean?
[00:21:35.539]It means that any place in that range,
[00:21:38.027]between 4 and 75, hydrogen will burn.
[00:21:41.426]So in theory, pure hydrogen won't burn.
[00:21:44.770]You can't make it burn,
[00:21:46.069]because it needs oxygen.
[00:21:48.359]Now what I do, is when I'm encountering a new chemical,
[00:21:50.618]and I'm trying to figure out how dangerous is this,
[00:21:53.818]what I'll do is I'll go back to
[00:21:54.657]something I'm pretty comfortable with.
[00:21:56.130]So in this case I thought gasoline.
[00:21:58.418]How does this compare to gasoline?
[00:22:00.865]Well, gasoline has a flammable range of 1.4 to 7.6.
[00:22:05.018]The range is much narrower than it is for hydrogen,
[00:22:07.925]but 1.4% gasoline's pretty low,
[00:22:12.055]so that's, but it just gives you an idea
[00:22:15.072]so you can see how you can compare it to stuff.
[00:22:16.765]That's how I do it.
[00:22:19.685]Okay so what other hazards does it have?
[00:22:23.854]Oh, come on, do something.
[00:22:27.904]Okay.
[00:22:28.737]From the safety data sheet,
[00:22:29.986]it says it's a gas under pressure and a simple asphyxiant.
[00:22:33.394]Now again, that's one of those definitions,
[00:22:34.924]you should know what that means.
[00:22:36.354]What is it?
[00:22:37.386]It just basically means that hydrogen can displace air,
[00:22:40.365]and then you don't have enough oxygen to breathe,
[00:22:41.965]and that can kill you.
[00:22:44.367]Something else from the safety data sheet
[00:22:46.167]is it's incompatibilities,
[00:22:47.757]and I'm kinda cherry picking
[00:22:48.706]'cuz I'm trying to show you how I'm,
[00:22:50.266]it depends on the situation what information's important.
[00:22:54.026]As we go along you'll see why it is I picked
[00:22:55.797]this particular piece of information.
[00:22:58.335]So it's incompatibilities, oxidizers.
[00:23:04.426]Come on.
[00:23:07.013]Turn it toward the computer, Dan, it'll go.
[00:23:10.517]Okay.
[00:23:11.350]So, how do we minimize the risks?
[00:23:15.778]This is really gonna be dead simple.
[00:23:18.197]For the gas under pressure,
[00:23:19.317]we're gonna secure the cylinder.
[00:23:20.818]What kind of thing is that?
[00:23:22.567]Is that an engineering control?
[00:23:24.018]Yeah, I'm strapping it to something.
[00:23:25.595]So I've got a tool there to help me.
[00:23:28.066]I'm gonna keep the valve cover on it when not in use.
[00:23:30.538]Now that's an engineering control,
[00:23:31.715]'cuz it's made to have the threads on it,
[00:23:33.474]you have the cap put on it,
[00:23:34.477]it's also a procedural thing,
[00:23:36.098]I've gotta remember to put the cap on the cylinder.
[00:23:39.487]Asphyxiation.
[00:23:40.527]I'm going to keep the cylinder closed when I'm not using it.
[00:23:42.887]I'm going to make sure I use it in a well-ventilated area.
[00:23:47.258]What about flammability?
[00:23:48.887]I'm going to keep it away from sources of ignition.
[00:23:51.607]It says that all over the place in the safety data sheet.
[00:23:54.435]What can they be?
[00:23:55.437]Flames, hot surfaces, equipment, sparks.
[00:23:58.138]Let's talk about sparks a little more.
[00:24:00.458]Where do you get sparks from?
[00:24:01.497]You get, have you ever flipped on an electrical switch
[00:24:03.265]in a dark room and sometimes
[00:24:04.186]you'll see a little arc through there?
[00:24:06.607]That's a spark.
[00:24:08.076]Electrical motors, when they're spinning,
[00:24:09.866]they've got bushings on 'em,
[00:24:11.038]and typically when that's spinning around,
[00:24:12.618]you're getting little arcs off those bushings in the motor.
[00:24:16.007]You can have tools that spark.
[00:24:18.348]Of course, you can have, also,
[00:24:19.727]you can have sparks from static electricity.
[00:24:24.047]So what is this?
[00:24:25.727](audience laughing and talking)
[00:24:27.919]Anybody know?
[00:24:28.989]It's a bad day.
[00:24:29.956]It's a bad day?
[00:24:31.018]Yeah, it's a bad day.
[00:24:33.058]That is the Hindenburg, the airship Hindenburg,
[00:24:36.628]this was May, I think 1937.
[00:24:40.988]Anybody know what they thought
[00:24:42.876]was the likely source of why this happened?
[00:24:48.846]Some people said there was a bomb on the airship
[00:24:51.036]and it was detonated.
[00:24:52.706]What they really think was the mostly likely cause
[00:24:55.446]of this, of what's going on here, was a spark.
[00:25:00.596]In doing my research, I thought, well okay, it's a spark.
[00:25:05.346]People can detect about a one millijoule spark,
[00:25:09.565]so you got static on you and you sense something,
[00:25:11.656]about the weakest thing you can feel is one millijoule.
[00:25:15.556]Thirty millijoules and it'll make you jump.
[00:25:18.165]It's a hard static discharge.
[00:25:22.058]Hydrogen will ignite at 0.02 millijoules for a spark,
[00:25:27.788]so it needs almost nothing for it to begin to burn.
[00:25:31.268]Now, is the Hindenburg, is it exploding, or is it burning?
[00:25:35.676][Audience Members] It's burning.
[00:25:36.936]It's burning.
[00:25:38.503]Go up here.
[00:25:39.336]There's a whole bunch of hydrogen up here
[00:25:40.472]that isn't on fire yet, is it?
[00:25:42.764]The flames have gotta move forward,
[00:25:44.383]they gotta burn through the,
[00:25:45.594]the bags, the gas bags holding the hydrogen,
[00:25:47.874]it's gotta release the hydrogen,
[00:25:49.141]then the hydrogen's gotta come in contact with air,
[00:25:52.714]and it's gonna burn.
[00:25:53.692]It took about 30 seconds from the beginning of this fire,
[00:25:57.234]until it actually consumed the Hindenburg.
[00:26:00.135]So 30 seconds, that's not an explosion, that's a fire,
[00:26:03.412]it's burning.
[00:26:06.212]So now let's talk about a different chemical, oxygen.
[00:26:09.863]Greatest hazard?
[00:26:11.092]It's a category one oxidizing gas.
[00:26:12.890]There's only two categories.
[00:26:14.754]I think.
[00:26:15.587]Anyway, it's a category one oxidizing gas.
[00:26:18.238]What does an oxidizer do?
[00:26:19.387]Well this is what is important for us,
[00:26:21.617]is that an oxidizer can initiate or enhance
[00:26:24.645]the combustion of other materials.
[00:26:26.236]That sounds kinda nice and gentle,
[00:26:27.918]it's like teddy bear, puppy stuff, right?
[00:26:32.398]It's also a gas in refresher.
[00:26:34.886]Incompatibilities.
[00:26:36.358]Combustible materials.
[00:26:40.566]Here's an example of oxygen-enhanced combustion.
[00:26:43.925]The only way you get these things off the ground
[00:26:45.895]is you need a whole lot of oxygen present somehow.
[00:26:48.026]Either liquid oxygen or in a solid fuel propellant.
[00:26:57.137]How do we minimize the risks?
[00:27:01.037]It's a gas under pressure, secure it.
[00:27:02.685]Valve cover on it when not in use.
[00:27:04.758]Keep it away from combustible, oxidizable materials.
[00:27:07.566]Things like organics, grease, oil, flammable gases.
[00:27:11.598]Remember, it says it's incompatible with these things,
[00:27:14.667]which means if you put 'em together,
[00:27:15.747]something bad happens.
[00:27:18.817]So let's review.
[00:27:20.086]We've talked about the hazards of hydrogen and oxygen.
[00:27:22.806]We've talked about how to minimize the risks.
[00:27:25.627]All of this information came from the safety data sheet.
[00:27:28.907]Everything I've just,
[00:27:30.107]with the exception of the millijoules stuff,
[00:27:32.816]all of the rest of this came from the safety data sheet.
[00:27:36.307]Were any of these things we talked about,
[00:27:37.547]were they complicated?
[00:27:39.015]No they were really simple, weren't they?
[00:27:40.726]So, assessing a hazard,
[00:27:42.857]determining how you would minimize the risk,
[00:27:44.707]is really a straightforward process.
[00:27:47.958]So now let's apply this to a research project,
[00:27:50.475]an actual thing that was being done and that happened.
[00:27:55.073]The case study we're gonna use
[00:27:56.665]is something that happened at the University of Hawaii.
[00:27:59.955]If you've followed anything on the news about that,
[00:28:03.285]you kinda know where this talk's going.
[00:28:05.225]But I still think you're gonna be surprised
[00:28:07.497]at some things you'll learn.
[00:28:09.754]So here's the research project.
[00:28:11.675]Goal: to study the synthesis of polyhydroxyalkonates
[00:28:16.166]called PHAs, by this bacteria, who could say,
[00:28:20.118]how do you say that first word?
[00:28:22.718]Anybody?
[00:28:24.427](audience talking)
[00:28:25.977]Excuse me?
[00:28:26.969][Audience Members] Cupriavidus.
[00:28:28.827]Cup- cupra?
[00:28:29.889][Audience Members] Cupriavidus.
[00:28:31.219]Okay, okay.
[00:28:32.126]I had it as C. necator.
[00:28:34.516]And then my cohort decided to put in the whole first name.
[00:28:39.806]For me it was just C. Necator,
[00:28:40.907]because I knew it, I was safe there,
[00:28:42.337]and then she had to add the first word.
[00:28:44.318]It's like I can't say that.
[00:28:45.798]But anyway, the process is for,
[00:28:47.638]it's for bioplastics research.
[00:28:50.493]This has been being done for a while,
[00:28:51.775]so I'm not talking about something that's novel.
[00:28:55.015]The bacteria in part needs an ice growth chamber,
[00:28:58.135]it also needs a favorable environment
[00:29:00.666]that includes somewhere in the neighborhood
[00:29:02.066]of 70% hydrogen, 20% oxygen, and 10% CO2.
[00:29:06.668]These are all together, right?
[00:29:10.108]Where we're at right now, does anything raise a red flag?
[00:29:15.236]That's the flammable range of hydrogen.
[00:29:17.694]Yeah, and I'm mixing it with oxygen, aren't I?
[00:29:20.636]So you would think, they shouldn't,
[00:29:23.352]it said incompatible.
[00:29:25.063]So how can people do research with this stuff
[00:29:27.377]when the safety data sheet says incompatible?
[00:29:29.545]Well obviously they're able to do it.
[00:29:31.886]But does that mean that it doesn't have a hazard?
[00:29:33.846]Does that mean it didn't create a new hazard?
[00:29:36.625]See, we're gonna learn about that as we go forward.
[00:29:41.185]Let's talk about research papers, just a little bit.
[00:29:44.985]Research papers often do not include information
[00:29:47.545]on chemical, physical, or biological hazards.
[00:29:51.675]They'll just tell you how to do it.
[00:29:53.806]Details on the sourcing or setup of equipment.
[00:29:56.046]They just figure you know.
[00:29:57.897]Details on the process or reaction hazards.
[00:30:00.345]For example, there are research papers that won't tell you
[00:30:04.034]that this reaction will give off a toxic gas.
[00:30:06.857]You're just supposed to figure that one out.
[00:30:08.756](audience laughing)
[00:30:09.977]Yeah!
[00:30:10.845]And so it's up to the researcher to identify
[00:30:12.545]these extra hazards and to minimize them.
[00:30:15.726]So in this case, this bioplastics research,
[00:30:18.904]this is the first reactor they use,
[00:30:20.575]it's a batch reactor,
[00:30:21.636]they put the bacteria on petri dishes inside this,
[00:30:25.355]and then they see the pressure gauge right there,
[00:30:28.916]then they take this over to cylinders of CO2
[00:30:31.737]and they put some CO2 in it,
[00:30:32.983]then they go over to their oxygen,
[00:30:34.185]they put some oxygen in it,
[00:30:35.497]and they use this pressure gauge to determine
[00:30:37.006]how much they put in,
[00:30:38.028]and then they go over to the cylinder of hydrogen,
[00:30:39.796]and they put some hydrogen in it.
[00:30:41.186]Then they take a sample of it,
[00:30:43.566]right up in here,
[00:30:45.577]to see what kind of mixture they got.
[00:30:48.046]So they can write it down.
[00:30:53.057]Everybody with me?
[00:30:53.966]The problem with this batch process
[00:30:55.524]is that once the gases are getting used up,
[00:30:57.846]you're not putting anymore in,
[00:31:00.796]so they've created a second process.
[00:31:03.377]Oops.
[00:31:04.508]Now I don't want you too caught up in the design,
[00:31:07.116]it's just the thing,
[00:31:08.297]here it is, you've got your valve for gas sampling,
[00:31:12.547]here's your reactor, that's where the bacteria're gonna be,
[00:31:14.545]probably in some kind of growth media, right?
[00:31:16.876]You've got nutrient solution, pressure gauge,
[00:31:20.046]measure oxygen, you got your gas supply line, right?
[00:31:23.966]So they're gonna be able to feed the gas mixture
[00:31:26.748]to this reactor as the bacteria are
[00:31:28.697]in there doing their thing.
[00:31:30.846]So where do you get the gases from?
[00:31:36.384]This.
[00:31:37.309]They created, they went out and bought,
[00:31:39.389]a low pressure tank,
[00:31:43.009]and then they took this tank,
[00:31:44.811]and you can see the pressure gauge on it, right?
[00:31:47.699]There's the pressure gauge,
[00:31:48.699]that's where they add the gases,
[00:31:50.040]and then of course once they get it all mixed up,
[00:31:51.779]then they can take a sample to see what the mixture is,
[00:31:53.850]and then they can hook it onto that reactor,
[00:31:56.579]and then feed the gases into the reactor as they're needed.
[00:32:02.571]Does this concern anybody?
[00:32:05.299]That I've got 70% hydrogen and 20% oxygen in this cylinder?
[00:32:11.856](audience talking)
[00:32:16.189]We know that we've got a combustible atmosphere, am I right?
[00:32:20.600]We've got enough oxygen, we've got enough hydrogen.
[00:32:22.720]The question is, how could it get going?
[00:32:25.760]How could something bad happen?
[00:32:27.800]There isn't a light bulb inside,
[00:32:30.330]there's not a switch inside, it's just the pressure gauge.
[00:32:34.949]There are no obvious sources of ignition.
[00:32:37.827]So how could something go wrong inside the cylinder?
[00:32:44.509]Could that happen?
[00:32:47.229]And if it does happen,
[00:32:49.949]does the tank burn like the Hindenburg,
[00:32:52.411]or does it do something else?
[00:32:57.779]But how could you have it happen?
[00:32:59.571]We've all done this,
[00:33:00.419]you walked across the floor in the wintertime,
[00:33:01.840]you touched something and you got a static discharge,
[00:33:04.789]didn't you?
[00:33:05.622]Or somebody touches you
[00:33:06.480]and then you got the static discharge.
[00:33:09.021]Somebody touching the tank could transfer it to the tank,
[00:33:11.381]it could be on the tank
[00:33:12.420]and somebody or something touching the tank
[00:33:14.088]could have a discharge that way.
[00:33:18.657]Now, were there any warnings about this?
[00:33:21.950]Again, this is University of Hawaii.
[00:33:25.230]The postdoc reported, of course this is after,
[00:33:27.358]I think this might have been after the fact,
[00:33:28.510]I don't think this was before,
[00:33:31.038]but she might have been saying this before,
[00:33:32.678]she reported getting shocked when she touched the tank.
[00:33:38.676]A week before, when she was using the first setup,
[00:33:41.036]that little batch system, remember?
[00:33:42.659]That slide?
[00:33:45.158]She charged this little thing with gases,
[00:33:46.798]or she was in the process of it,
[00:33:49.145]she heard a crackling sound.
[00:33:51.947]The pressure gauge jumped, and then it began to drop.
[00:33:55.587]What do you think happened?
[00:33:59.927]We had a reaction in there.
[00:34:00.888]The hydrogen and the oxygen reacted, turned into water.
[00:34:04.118]The investigation that occurred later
[00:34:08.096]decided that the reason it didn't blow up
[00:34:10.779]was that the gases really weren't mixed at the time,
[00:34:13.248]so it burned through that reaction chamber
[00:34:15.827]like it burned through the Hindenburg.
[00:34:20.436]So here it is, the postdoc opened the vessel,
[00:34:22.558]and she found the plates were singed and cracked,
[00:34:25.083]and that there was a burnt odor.
[00:34:28.963]Here's a near miss.
[00:34:31.754]And she doesn't pay attention to the warning.
[00:34:35.732]Again, research like this has been done for years.
[00:34:40.464]On the second operation, she had done it ten times already.
[00:34:45.523]No problems.
[00:34:47.715]So, she set up the second reactor, the 50 liter tank,
[00:34:51.683]that was that green tank we were looking at,
[00:34:53.624]so she set up to do her 11th reaction.
[00:34:59.414]And this is what happened.
[00:35:02.433]You can see there's the tank, right there.
[00:35:06.184]These drawers that you see opened,
[00:35:08.603]the blast wave bounced them open.
[00:35:15.413]Here's a little different shot of the tank.
[00:35:17.291]You can see how it blew apart.
[00:35:21.254]The investigation, and the red is blood,
[00:35:25.643]just so you know.
[00:35:27.334]The researcher was kneeling next to the tank
[00:35:29.934]when it went off,
[00:35:31.024]and it is probably when she touched it that it went off.
[00:35:35.334]Here's another picture of the lab.
[00:35:36.584]They call this a biosafety cabinet,
[00:35:39.024]but I think it's a fume hood.
[00:35:40.723]But, again, you see all the drawers that are open?
[00:35:42.823]Shattered that, didn't it?
[00:35:44.944]The tank I think was down in this area.
[00:35:50.054]Whoops, go back up.
[00:35:52.795]Okay, that's a refrigerator, across the lab.
[00:35:55.523]Part of the tank blew off of it
[00:35:58.224]and went over and hit the refrigerator.
[00:36:01.104]They estimated that it,
[00:36:02.694]the force of the explosion was somewhere between
[00:36:05.155]70 and 700 grams of TNT.
[00:36:09.363]She lost part of one of her arms, the lower part of her arm,
[00:36:13.363]and when I was reading the report,
[00:36:15.235]they just said she lost it,
[00:36:16.723]and I thought "well, didn't they try to reattach it?"
[00:36:20.144]Well, when I read the investigation report,
[00:36:21.774]they said there weren't any pieces big enough
[00:36:23.774]that they could reattach, so she lost part of her arm in it.
[00:36:27.155]Of course she also suffered burns,
[00:36:28.611]but from my standpoint, she's really lucky to be alive.
[00:36:33.544]That's where the tank was sitting on the floor.
[00:36:35.894]So you can see the gouges, I suppose that's concrete.
[00:36:41.342]Okay, here's a schematic that the investigators put together
[00:36:44.584]to try to understand what exactly all happened in the lab.
[00:36:47.502]So let's go around here, there she is,
[00:36:50.534]there's the tank,
[00:36:51.854]some of these red lines are saying,
[00:36:53.414]"we found pieces of her arm in these other locations."
[00:36:57.254]So let's go around here.
[00:36:58.659]There's the, they call it the biosafety cabinet,
[00:37:00.122]I'm saying the fume hood,
[00:37:01.301]so it blew the side of it off,
[00:37:02.829]it pushed it back into the wall,
[00:37:05.040]that's what it shows there,
[00:37:06.202]and it pushed that part of the wall out six inches.
[00:37:10.391]It knocked over one of these tanks,
[00:37:11.801]that was an oxygen tank, and it damaged the valve
[00:37:13.970]and the oxygen tank bled into the room.
[00:37:16.071]Nothing happened, it just bled into the room.
[00:37:19.802]There's the refrigerator where it got hit,
[00:37:21.762]and you can read this,
[00:37:23.162]hits the wall, because of the pressure,
[00:37:25.090]and it blows part of the drywall out into the hallway.
[00:37:30.277]We got some other things that are impacted.
[00:37:33.109]Over-pressure on the drawers, when I mentioned that before,
[00:37:35.409]how it knocked the drawers open
[00:37:36.720]with the pressure that hit 'em.
[00:37:39.200]So, pretty serious stuff right?
[00:37:42.120]Okay, this is the part where, it bothered me because,
[00:37:46.570]I'm not omnipotent, so now we're saying in hindsight,
[00:37:51.449]well that's like armchair quarterback, right?
[00:37:55.389]Well if you're gonna learn something,
[00:37:57.496]you have to say what could have been done different?
[00:38:01.880]So you're kinda forced to go forward with this,
[00:38:04.770]even though you might not be comfortable with it.
[00:38:08.110]Could they have done that,
[00:38:08.981]ground the tank to prevent static?
[00:38:11.162]Yeah, possibly.
[00:38:12.660]Couldn't hurt, right?
[00:38:15.421]They found that the pressure gauge
[00:38:16.952]was not intrinsically safe, but they found that that
[00:38:19.202]was not the source of the explosion.
[00:38:23.130]You could've filled and used the tank remotely.
[00:38:26.650]Now, 70 grams of TNT, how remote do you wanna be?
[00:38:31.301]Right?
[00:38:32.421]That's pretty remote.
[00:38:33.431]And that's a risk minimization practice, right?
[00:38:37.121]Remote?
[00:38:38.450]So pretty difficult.
[00:38:40.925]They could've designed a system that mixed the gases
[00:38:43.752]as they were going into the reactor.
[00:38:46.002]Now, I haven't looked at the reactor,
[00:38:47.730]could the reactor have had static and blown up?
[00:38:49.899]Maybe.
[00:38:55.160]She could've heeded the warnings that she was getting,
[00:38:57.509]she was getting a number of them.
[00:39:00.791]Remember the near miss.
[00:39:07.461]I've also thought about this.
[00:39:09.592]Some of these considerations might not be obvious.
[00:39:13.391]She's a microbiologist, she's not a compressed gas expert.
[00:39:19.161]Right?
[00:39:20.341]But that's the point, isn't it?
[00:39:21.930]She was working outside of her area of expertise.
[00:39:27.632]She could've called the gas company,
[00:39:28.938]saying, "hey, I need help putting this together."
[00:39:31.418]She could've called Environmental Health and Safety
[00:39:33.188]and said, "it says these things are incompatible,
[00:39:35.486]"but obviously people are putting them together,
[00:39:37.629]"people are doing research with this,
[00:39:39.200]"so am I missing something?"
[00:39:42.168]There was an instance here not too long back,
[00:39:44.589]few years back actually,
[00:39:45.840]where we found out researchers were gonna be mixing
[00:39:48.938]potassium permanganate, which is a strong oxidizer,
[00:39:51.368]with liquid paraffin, which is organic,
[00:39:54.448]and we were saying, "you can't do that,
[00:39:56.288]"they're incompatible."
[00:39:58.018]So we read their research papers that they had,
[00:40:00.189]the researchers had recognized that,
[00:40:02.096]and they had actually evaluated that material
[00:40:04.879]for stability.
[00:40:06.829]And then we took it beyond that to say
[00:40:09.967]let's do what we can to this stuff.
[00:40:11.425]We got with the state patrol,
[00:40:12.556]we actually tried to detonate a little piece of it,
[00:40:14.767]and it wouldn't detonate.
[00:40:16.255]It would burn, but it wouldn't detonate.
[00:40:19.013]And as a result they did their research.
[00:40:23.364]Other ramifications, this is the University of Hawaii.
[00:40:26.655]So, they were fined $115,500 by OSHA,
[00:40:31.585]which doesn't sound like that much.
[00:40:34.367]The explosion caused $716,000 to the lab building.
[00:40:39.105]I believe the lab where the explosion occurred
[00:40:40.807]is still shut down.
[00:40:42.436]And this is, what, a year or two ago, I believe?
[00:40:46.345]The building was closed for days.
[00:40:48.033]I'm sure no researchers needed to do any research, right?
[00:40:50.556]I'm sure they didn't have anything that was time sensitive,
[00:40:52.407]like bacteria cultures and stuff like that
[00:40:54.674]that they needed to change out, right?
[00:40:58.903]Of course the university is being sued by the postdoc.
[00:41:06.287]There is an official report, 38 pages long,
[00:41:09.394]that made recommendations
[00:41:10.415]for how to make the research safer.
[00:41:15.585]The investigation found failures at all levels
[00:41:19.135]from the research, to EHS, to administration.
[00:41:27.607]Now, do you think that that 38 pages
[00:41:29.276]are gonna affect the research that's done?
[00:41:31.455]Hopefully it'll make it a lot safer, right?
[00:41:34.087]But do you think it'll make it faster to do research
[00:41:36.575]or slower?
[00:41:38.655]Probably slower.
[00:41:41.807]So here are the conclusions,
[00:41:43.264]here are the things to take home from this.
[00:41:46.575]When you're going to do something
[00:41:47.895]that you haven't done before,
[00:41:49.236]you've gotta go beyond the research papers.
[00:41:51.876]You've gotta go into the safety data sheets.
[00:41:54.836]You've gotta read other support information.
[00:42:00.767]You've gotta consider the chemical reactions.
[00:42:02.695]Again, she's mixing two chemicals that were in theory,
[00:42:04.945]well, not in theory but WERE, incompatible.
[00:42:09.055]So she went from oxidizer, inflammable gas, to explosive.
[00:42:15.065]She changed the hazards.
[00:42:20.514]Gotta consider equipment setup and process hazards.
[00:42:23.825]Again, these two chemicals aren't a problem
[00:42:25.476]until you put 'em together, right?
[00:42:28.156]And then of course you've gotta,
[00:42:29.436]when you're working outside your area of expertise
[00:42:31.567]you gotta enlist the experts in that area.
[00:42:35.767]And I know we're getting into a lot more
[00:42:36.705]multi-disciplinary research,
[00:42:38.255]so you've gotta recognize that
[00:42:39.716]if you're gonna be putting things together
[00:42:41.634]that are not your area of expertise
[00:42:43.785]you gotta find somebody to advise you on it.
[00:42:46.076]If you call us, it may not be me.
[00:42:48.407]It might be the fire marshal that I'm gonna get ahold of,
[00:42:50.847]because he's the expert.
[00:42:56.609]These near misses, and things like that,
[00:42:58.279]you need to report them.
[00:42:59.399]You can't learn from it unless you report it.
[00:43:01.788]So if you've got a departmental safety chair, let them know.
[00:43:06.849]You got just a chair of the department, let them know,
[00:43:09.897]so that we can get it out to the department.
[00:43:11.719]Chemistry, if they have a near miss,
[00:43:13.239]there's an e-mail that goes out kind of
[00:43:14.868]to the departmental folks to say "here was a near miss,
[00:43:17.466]"this is what we should've done differently."
[00:43:19.999]Also, this right here in this green box.
[00:43:23.097]This is our webwite, this is the EHS homepage,
[00:43:25.731]and you can't see it very well,
[00:43:26.937]but it's a near miss reporting system,
[00:43:30.468]so you can click on it, fill it out, and it'll come to us.
[00:43:34.114]If we need to, and we almost always follow up on it.
[00:43:37.967]Resources.
[00:43:39.228]This is something I didn't have in 1990.
[00:43:41.407]We've got the world wide web.
[00:43:43.436]You can jump out there, read a safety data sheet,
[00:43:45.708]you can read a couple different safety data sheets.
[00:43:47.417]You can go to Sigma-Aldrich,
[00:43:48.455]and then you can go to Fisher,
[00:43:49.847]if it's a fresh gas you can go to Matheson,
[00:43:52.268]and read all these different safety data sheets.
[00:43:54.428]You can read hydrogen oxygen mixture hazards,
[00:43:59.586]and type it in, 'cuz you know it's something new.
[00:44:04.405]There's a chemical safety library
[00:44:05.527]that's been recently created.
[00:44:07.359]I haven't had a chance to really look at it that much,
[00:44:11.268]but it's being supported by a lot of chemical industries,
[00:44:14.948]and it's a place where they're all going to put out
[00:44:17.668]reaction hazards that they've encountered,
[00:44:20.319]that are not normally necessarily published,
[00:44:23.377]because the thing in Hawaii,
[00:44:24.988]the reason we know about it's
[00:44:26.028]because somebody got injured, right?
[00:44:27.287]If they just had an explosion, man,
[00:44:28.602]maybe we wouldn't have known.
[00:44:31.608]But this way, they're trying to get it out
[00:44:33.620]that "here were our near misses,
[00:44:35.386]"here was an accident, this is how it happened."
[00:44:40.479]There's also something called
[00:44:41.338]Bretherik's Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards.
[00:44:48.439]If you're determined enough, you can find this online.
[00:44:54.489]'Cuz I found it.
[00:44:55.879]You can look up chemicals,
[00:44:57.329]you can search for chemicals in there,
[00:44:58.638]for what kind of hazards they are.
[00:44:59.809]It generally won't say you add hydrogen to oxygen
[00:45:02.789]you get explosion, right?
[00:45:04.878]It may not go to that detail,
[00:45:06.717]but it can still at least give you some information
[00:45:09.191]on chemical hazards.
[00:45:11.728]Of course you can always call us,
[00:45:13.369]and even if we're not the experts,
[00:45:15.631]usually we can find somebody who is to advise you.
[00:45:19.452]And of course we'll meet with anyone on any subjects.
[00:45:23.983]Are there any questions or comments?
[00:45:28.961]It's kind of a somber end to this discussion, so
[00:45:33.332]I gotta have this.
[00:45:36.922]Oh, gee whiz!
[00:45:38.402]We got puppies and kittens.
[00:45:39.504](audience laughing)
[00:45:40.337]So there's a happy ending.
[00:45:42.780]Any questions?
[00:45:46.361]If I could add a comment.
[00:45:47.990]If you have a question we need to use this
[00:45:50.081]so it's on the video.
[00:45:59.327]My comment is,
[00:46:00.338]is if you're working off of published material,
[00:46:06.041]there's always a contact for the authors.
[00:46:09.428]Yes, you're right.
[00:46:10.503]Did everybody hear that?
[00:46:11.460]You can always contact the authors
[00:46:12.719]on how they set things up,
[00:46:13.753]is that what you're saying Julie?
[00:46:15.279]And what hazards that they had identified.
[00:46:19.861]I doubt that they did that in this situation,
[00:46:24.411]because other researchers are doing it,
[00:46:26.262]somehow they managed to do it safely.
[00:46:27.971]On something like this,
[00:46:29.142]I don't know if I'd be comfortable
[00:46:30.170]with just grounding the tank,
[00:46:31.745]because of what the stuff is.
[00:46:34.662]We're not talking a fire here,
[00:46:36.512]we're talking a significant explosion.
[00:46:39.702]We would've needed a whole lot of help
[00:46:43.801]to say "okay, this is a safe thing to do."
[00:46:46.731]We probably would've brought in the fire marshal,
[00:46:48.792]compressed gas company, things like that,
[00:46:50.822]experts to help advise us.
[00:46:53.931]So good point, Julie.
[00:47:07.310]I have a question about personal protection equipment,
[00:47:11.171]how are they reliable and how can I maintain?
[00:47:17.062]So the question is PPE, personal protective equipment?
[00:47:20.400]How about reliability, usability, reliability?
[00:47:25.206]It's getting better.
[00:47:28.115]For example on a Sigma-Aldrich safety data sheet
[00:47:30.785]for a chemical,
[00:47:32.265]you can go back to like the PPE recommendations,
[00:47:34.806]and they'll actually give you on at least
[00:47:36.726]almost all the safety data sheets I've looked at,
[00:47:38.585]they'll give you a specific glove to wear
[00:47:41.823]that's supposed to be good against the chemical.
[00:47:43.875]Now, guess what, almost all the time
[00:47:45.414]it's a Sigma-Aldrich glove,
[00:47:47.503]but at least they're telling you
[00:47:48.926]something that will be there to protect you.
[00:47:52.265]The other PPE it just depends on what you're working with.
[00:47:55.406]If you're working with something,
[00:47:56.394]let's say you're working with a lot of flammable liquids.
[00:47:58.424]Well you might not wanna wear just a regular lab coat,
[00:48:00.886]they make lab coats that are fire resistant.
[00:48:04.554]It's the same thing with your safety glasses.
[00:48:07.465]Safety glasses that are sold are required to meet
[00:48:09.486]federal standards, and so that means if something,
[00:48:13.275]so they know that if you get hit by something,
[00:48:16.025]an object or whatever, that it's supposed
[00:48:17.486]to be a certain amount of resistance to it.
[00:48:21.925]And then of course you've got your standard clothing
[00:48:24.614]you're supposed to wear.
[00:48:25.865]Collars that are relatively high,
[00:48:28.555]pants that go to the floor, closed-toed shoes,
[00:48:31.355]not mesh-toed shoes closed-toed shoes,
[00:48:34.126]but we're talking real closed-toed shoes, like leather,
[00:48:38.806]and I've always advised people
[00:48:40.228]if they're working with things that are flammable
[00:48:42.359]or could catch fire or something like that,
[00:48:44.570]maybe they oughta consider just wearing cotton or wool.
[00:48:48.421]Stay away from the polyesters.
[00:48:50.399]There was an incident at UCLA a number of years ago,
[00:48:54.458]and the gal was working with a pyrophoric liquid,
[00:48:57.021]and she got some on her,
[00:49:00.141]and of course pyrophoric liquid, what's that mean?
[00:49:01.941]It catches fire, right?
[00:49:03.449]Well, she eventually died from it.
[00:49:05.419]She was wearing a plastic, a polyester,
[00:49:09.278]rayon type of sweater in the lab that day.
[00:49:12.199]She didn't have a lab coat on,
[00:49:13.610]she wasn't wearing safety glasses.
[00:49:17.667]That fire that got on her then used her sweater to burn.
[00:49:23.029]So she made things worse for her just by her clothing,
[00:49:25.978]so PPE is really important.
[00:49:27.429]In a lot of cases if you got the right PPE on
[00:49:31.178]it'll help you a lot.
[00:49:34.719]I've seen incidents where, there was a firefighter
[00:49:37.679]and he wasn't wearing the right bunker gear.
[00:49:39.709]He had a t-shirt on and he had the straps
[00:49:42.849]for bunker gear pants,
[00:49:44.948]so the straps are shoulder straps.
[00:49:46.508]He got caught in a fire ball.
[00:49:50.508]What was amazing to me was,
[00:49:52.060]he had first and second degree burns
[00:49:53.999]all over the place on his upper body,
[00:49:55.959]but where the straps for the bunker gear went,
[00:49:59.027]nice, white skin.
[00:50:01.348]Because he had his PPE on.
[00:50:03.569]So you get the right stuff and it's very effective.
[00:50:07.518]Any other questions?
[00:50:15.768](audience talking)
[00:50:21.997]There was also a question,
[00:50:24.487]part of the last question was about
[00:50:28.665]washing lab coats?
[00:50:30.625]Excuse me, washing?
[00:50:31.699]Washing lab coats, can she wash lab coats?
[00:50:36.699]What's our policy on that, Brenda?
[00:50:38.667]Washing lab coats?
[00:50:41.197]We don't have a policy on that.
[00:50:42.646]Oh, we don't, okay.
[00:50:45.184]There are certain care instructions
[00:50:47.165]when you're dealing with flame-retardant,
[00:50:52.102]there's other considerations there.
[00:50:55.264](audience talking)
[00:50:58.504]I said there is no policy,
[00:51:01.072]formal policy,
[00:51:02.063]but there are considerations if you're gonna launder,
[00:51:05.121]particularly if you're gonna launder
[00:51:06.801]flame-resistant protective gear,
[00:51:10.100]there's certain instructions that need to be followed.
[00:51:14.341]We would discourage laundering lab coats
[00:51:16.982]that are known to be highly contaminated
[00:51:20.500]like you were part of a spill,
[00:51:24.351]but ordinary lab coats,
[00:51:28.158]typically like in a bio lab,
[00:51:31.547]that are just ordinary soiled, wouldn't have an issue.
[00:51:35.370]So basically Brenda's saying,
[00:51:36.759]depends on the level of hazard in the coat.
[00:51:39.660]If you're willing to put it on, right?
[00:51:43.866]Then aren't you willing to wash it?
[00:51:45.820]Whereas if you don't wanna put it on, do you wanna wash it?
[00:51:48.028]No, because it's too contaminated,
[00:51:49.940]you don't wanna even put it on.
[00:51:51.482]So that's kinda how I would carry that.
[00:51:53.455]And it depends on department,
[00:51:55.421]some units on campus they've got their own washer, dryers.
[00:51:59.610]Some units on campus, if they want to,
[00:52:01.969]they can go in with an exchange with a company,
[00:52:04.900]and the company will take their lab coats
[00:52:06.660]and bring them new lab coats.
[00:52:08.090]Those are out there, and if you have questions on that,
[00:52:10.311]you know we can talk about that after this if you'd like.
[00:52:14.590]Any other questions?

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Tags:
chemical safety
hazard assessment
risk management
Dan Olsen

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Chemical Hazard Assessment and Risk Minimization

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