Chemistry officials update lab policies

After a small chemistry lab explosion injured two students Monday, university officials said they are re-evaluating undergraduate lab curriculums to ensure another incident does not occur.

While undergraduate labs are regularly reviewed for safety, chemistry department officials said they are now performing thorough and extensive reviews of the "educational benefit versus the health and safety cost" of all laboratory procedures — especially because an incident like this has not occurred in recent years. Although officials said the explosion could not have been caused by the scheduled CHEM242: Organic Chemistry Laboratory II's laboratory procedure — a standard reaction between nitric and sulfuric acid — alone, they said there is always room for improvement in training and safety procedures.

On Monday, a student was performing the reaction in room 1308 under a fume hood — a protective hood that ensures dangerous chemicals aren't released into the air — when the explosion took place and the hood caught fire. The building was evacuated for several hours and two students were treated for first and second-degree burns.

"[This reaction] not only has been done here for many years, but it's being performed at many institutions in the same way," chemistry department Chair Michael Doyle said. "I'm confounded by it."

The Department of Environmental Safety and university Fire Marshal Al Sactor are currently leading the ongoing investigation into the explosion, which officials declined to release the details.

While they still have not determined the cause of the explosion, they believe there must have been a third party involved — which may have been chemicals or residue from a waste container next to the acids — to cause such a violent reaction.

"Even freak accidents have root causes," Director of Environmental Safety Russell Furr said. "There are always things you can improve to try to minimize the risk."

Doyle said he is setting up a commission to look further into what caused the explosion and whether safety procedures need to be altered to further ensure student safety.

"We have a commission together to investigate all of the laboratory experiments that are taking place to assess the placement of waste containers … and our training of people to make sure we are following everything that is necessary," Doyle said. "There are standard protocols for virtually everything we do, but unfortunately for this one, this isn't something you could predict."

Furr said incidents like Monday's provide officials with a good opportunity to re-evaluate procedures and safety protocol.

"I'm hoping that we'll come up with some good recommendations and suggestions to further improve safety," he said. "We might get some other gains, which could be as simple as procedural changes like how we label containers or put things in the fume hood, but small layout issues can contribute if there's this possibility."

Students in chemistry laboratories are currently required to wear a protective lab coat and goggles, but some students, such as junior neuroscience and psychology major Dmitriy Stasishin, said students should be provided with additional materials to protect themselves.

"Maryland should consider providing gloves instead of charging $2 a pair, especially because a box of gloves isn't that expensive," Stasishin said. "It's comforting that they're re-evaluating, though, because a lot of labs work with pretty heavy duty materials."

But other students said Monday's incident was such a rare occurrence that additional safety procedures aren't necessary.

"That [incident] was something weird," sophomore biology major Brett Barker said. "It's just one incident. They should definitely figure out what happened, but I don't feel any less safe."

Doyle said the department will also look at the possibility of unpredictable reactions occurring in chemistry laboratories, and hopes the investigation will lead to answers that further improve standard laboratory procedures.

"The fact is you can't predict the unpredictable," he said. "Something happened in that laboratory that was totally unpredictable, and so what we're trying to see is: Can we minimize even that risk?"

abutaleb@umdbk.com