ACS Chemical Health & Safety最新文献

Accidents involving the transportation of hazardous materials (hazmats) may cause fatalities, injuries, and property damage along the transport route. It is thus imperative to adopt and implement a risk assessment and management framework that can be easily employed by decision/policymakers. This paper presents a quantitative risk assessment (QRA) framework to select the safest route for the transport of hazardous materials utilizing an accident database and human vulnerability models. Statistical models from relevant accident studies are used to determine the accident enhancing/mitigating contributions of different road geometrical features, which are then applied to data derived from an available database to determine accident frequencies. Consequences of accidents with humans are assessed using ALOHA and vulnerability models, while the risk is determined by combining both accident frequencies and consequences. The proposed method has been applied in a case study to assess the relative risks involved in LPG transportation along two different routes in Bangladesh and to identify the safer route. The effectiveness of a number of risk reduction measures has been assessed to manage risks, and the results of the risk assessment have been spatially presented on a geographical map. This map will help decision makers to make routing decisions and identify route sections that are most at risk to take appropriate emergency response actions and allocate medical and support services during emergencies.

Understanding methods to improve the safe handling of hazardous chemicals is important to improve laboratory safety. In this work, a simple online resource with contextual safety information on chemical spillage was developed and provided to year 1 undergraduate students prior to undertaking a laboratory practical. The effects of this safety information on amount of chemical subsequently spilled was examined using a randomized controlled trial, with a median effect size for the reduction in spillage of 37%, in comparison with those not receiving this information (95% confidence interval: −18% to 68% reduction and p = 0.14). To improve the robustness of this finding, a pretrial protocol for this randomized controlled trial was published on an open platform in a frozen document prior to data collection commencing. The effects of this pre-experiment, nonindividualized safety information was combined, using meta-analysis methodology, with results from a previous study which provided safety information postexperiment based on spillage by individual students; the effect of contextual safety information on chemical spillage gave a median reduction in spillage of 50% (95% confidence interval of 0% to 71% reduction, and p = 0.034). Any improvement through repeating the experiment was also investigated with spillage reduced by a median of 61% (95% confidence interval of 52% to 72% reduction, and p = 0.012). These three methods for reducing chemical spillage are compared using an implementation science perspective, highlighting that for the three methods discussed there is the trade-off in that the higher the evidence of benefit, the lower the ease, and hence likelihood, of implementation.

The author suggests a practical writing process for science writers considering publishing papers for ACS Chemical Health & Safety. He relies on three years of experience editing articles for ACS Chemical Health & Safety, especially from nonnative English speakers, as well as decades of reviewing scientific and technical documents from diverse disciplines. This paper offers a systematic approach to revising, editing, and proofreading by illustrating common miscues arising from science writers and suggesting techniques for overcoming them.

In this article, we establish a new vision of the importance of teaching laboratory safety, whereas some past views of safety education fade away. Here, we present an approach to teaching this important subject as an independent course by Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In this article, we introduce the advantages of safety education by MOOC, the construction and content of the MOOC “Safety in the Chemical Laboratory”, and the practices for safety education through MOOC resources in colleges and universities in mainland China.

A radiochemistry laboratory presents potential radiological hazards due to the handling of multiple radionuclides with various half-lives and modes of radiation emission. To minimize these hazards, appropriate safety management and radiation protection strategies should be in place. The radiochemistry laboratory at Soochow University is one such workplace that handles therapeutic radionuclides, fission products, and actinides in liquid, solid, and gas forms. This work highlights the significance of using safety precautions and radiation protection strategies before conducting experiments in such laboratories. The practical knowledge gained from a case of radioactive contamination is discussed to provide valuable experience for safely conducting radiochemistry experiments.

The transportation of dangerous goods by road is the most accident-prone mode of transportation, even if accidents involving road transportation of dangerous goods are considered as a Low Probability and High Consequence event (LPHC event). However, several dangerous goods are transported by road networks, such as petroleum products and chemicals, which can generate major dangerous consequences such as spills, explosions, fires, or toxic clouds. In this context, this article presents a method to calculate and quickly quantify the sizes of impact zones characterized by high lethality and irreversible injuries to people in the case of a hazardous materials transport accident. This method is used as a module for the analysis of the consequences of different potential accident scenarios, for the Web-GIS platform proposed by LOSE+LAB, that implements appropriate ICT tools and systems for monitoring the flow of goods that would enable a continuous monitoring system at the cross-border level and transmit data and information to the territory actors involved in the management of dangerous goods according to the ADR standard. The proposed method provides the user with a visualization of the possible outcomes of an event by reproducing the impact area for different accident scenarios, which can provide quick maps of the hazard and represents a decision support system for territorial governance in terms of intervention and response protocols for emergency management in the cases of dangerous goods accidents.

Painters experience occupational exposure through inhalation and skin absorption to various chemicals that are used as ingredients of paint mixtures and other related painting trades. Although several investigations indicated significant contribution of exposure via skin absorption to exhibit harmful effects on health among painters, assessment of the skin absorption hazards of the paint chemicals is limited. Here, we evaluated the skin absorption of a number of organic chemicals relevant to painting trades using mathematical models. For this purpose, we estimated the skin permeability coefficient of the chemicals using the Potts and Guy correlation equation. The estimated permeability coefficients were further utilized to estimate the maximum flux of the non-volatile chemicals across the skin. The skin permeability coefficient and maximum flux of the chemicals across the skin were compared to those of the chemicals to which the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) assigned a “skin” notation. We critically analyzed the estimated maximum fluxes and the acute toxicity data of the chemicals available in the literature that helped to identify the chemicals posing a significant skin absorption hazard. The analyses suggest that triethanolamine and m-phenylenediamine pose significant skin absorption hazards, though these chemicals have not yet been assigned a “skin” notation in the ACGIH TLV book. The ratio of dermal uptake directly from air to inhalation intake of volatile solvents used in paint mixtures was estimated for a typical occupational setting. N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone showed significant dermal uptake fraction compared to its intake via inhalation route.

Safety showers and eyewash stations are some of the most important and most recognizable safety features in laboratories, and their regular maintenance is necessary to ensure that they operate as expected in the event of an incident. In this case study, the improper installation of a safety shower in a high school chemistry laboratory led to failure of the shower during in-class activation. This case study ultimately describes a positive outcome as the activation revealed the fault prior to an emergency. Several recommendations for ensuring proper installation and encouraging regular assessment of safety equipment are made.