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Estimate: Academic Labs 11 Times More Dangerous Than Industrial Counterparts

Posted by samzenpus on from the will-I-live-to-take-the-test? dept.

Jim_Austin writes "Academic science labs are generally far less safe than labs in industry; one estimate says that people working in academic labs are 11x more likely to be hurt than their industrial counterparts. A group of grad students and postdocs in Minnesota decided to address the issue head-on. With encouragement and funding from DOW, and some leadership from their department chairs, they're in the process of totally remaking their departments' safety cultures."

3 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Depends on what they are doing by Carewolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is anything like my university, the chemistry labs keep blowing up due to students trying to make illegal drugs off hours.

    1. Re:Depends on what they are doing by ameoba · · Score: 5, Funny

      Our problem was Electrical Engineering grad students continually burning popcorn in the microwave.

      Yeah... the admissions standards were a little soft.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
    2. Re:Depends on what they are doing by usuallylost · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Are you sure it is just the students?

      One of my professors in college told me that when he was a graduate student one of his professors got arrested. The guy and a group of his grad students had been cooking up significant amounts of drugs in one of the schools labs after hours. They were using them to throw big drug parties. According to my professor the primary goal of the whole operation was to help them pickup members of a certain sorority that liked to attend the parties. One of the students involved got arrested which lead back to the professor and brought the whole thing down.