Safe and unsafe conditions and practices are shown. Topics include eye protection, handling and mixing chemicals, handling glassware, heating and handling hot items, loose clothing, hair, and jewelry, pipetting, and maintenance of a safe laboratory setting.
The items included here are not intended to provide complete laboratory safety training for chemistry students, but rather to supplement or illustrate safety training. Some of the movies and slides demonstrate unsafe procedures and their consequences.
Hazards to eyes in the chemistry laboratory include exposure to chemicals from vapors and splashed liquids, impact from broken glass and other solids in the event of an explosion, and exposure to ultraviolet lamps.
An introduction to safe handling and mixing of chemicals is presented. This includes adding water to acid, mixing chemicals in a flask, and mixing chemicals in a separatory funnel.
These movies are related to the safe handling of laboratory glassware. They include not putting glassware on the edge of a lab bench, not heating cracked glassware, not touching hot glass, creating a vacuum safely, and making separatory funnel protectors.
Heat sources and hot items must be used with caution to avoid fires, burns, and other problems. Included here are a demonstration of hot glass, safety concerns with the gas chromatograph, use of boiling stones, and gas burner and hot plate safety.
Loose clothing, hair, and jewelry present hazards in the laboratory as they can become tangled in equipment, dip into chemicals, or come into contact with a heat source and catch fire. Several examples demonstrate these dangers.
Here are examples of unsafe laboratory conditions including a cluttered work area, glassware on the edge of a lab bench, an unbalanced centrifuge in operation, food containers, open reagent bottles, and an unsecured gas cylinder.
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