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Topic: safety in chemistry  (Read 4509 times)

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Offline mana

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safety in chemistry
« on: January 24, 2016, 01:25:06 AM »
hi all
I want to prepare a lecture for under graduate students of chemistry about safety in chemistry, I have added some information like msds, the diamond of NFPA and signs of danger in chemical compounds and fume hood. but I think it is not enough, what should I add to my power point?

Offline Hunter2

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Re: safety in chemistry
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2016, 07:21:53 AM »
First thing is the people have to wear the right clothes means PPE (personal protective equipment). That is a closed Labcoat made by cotton not polyester (Why). Safety glasses (Googles) , right gloves depending which chemicals will be worked with. Safety shoes if worked in technica or factory. In Lab closed shoes no slippers.
Then the paperwork like MSDs and working procedures for the experiments
Knowledge how to use a fire estinguisher

Offline Arkcon

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Re: safety in chemistry
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2016, 08:25:23 AM »
There are many topics Googleable for you.  Some others:

Limiting horseplay.  Horseplay defined as general horseplay of the sort high school kids and undergraduates may engage in, and also improper lab procedures of the sort an expert may indulge in -- experiments must be planned, at the scale appropriate for the experiment, space needed for the scale in question, performed with the appropriate engineering safety controls in place.   You can read some horror stories online, and address them point by point.
Hey, I'm not judging.  I just like to shoot straight.  I'm a man of science.

Offline Corribus

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Re: safety in chemistry
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2016, 10:23:41 AM »
Chemical storage and proper waste disposal.

Oh and just FYI, they are not officially called MSDS any more. As of 2013 (I think), US regulatory agencies adopted an internationally standardized format called SDS. Though I think most people will continue to call them MSDS for quite a long time, it's still worth noting that there are a lot of differences between the old and new formats.

https://www.msdsonline.com/blog/compliance-education/2012/08/20/from-msds-to-sds
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?  - Richard P. Feynman

Offline Enthalpy

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Re: safety in chemistry
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2016, 08:23:43 PM »
- The amount matters. Nitromethane or ammonium nitrate are nothing in lab quantities but scary in rocket or train amounts.

- Some compounds are used by non-chemists and get nasty then. Bleach is the biggest killer compound in homes through the inadvertent mix with acids. Even under scientists: microelectronics, biology, archaeology... need hazardous compounds, for which the users may have studied the very specific information but have no broader chemical background.

- Stability, for instance of high-test hydrogen peroxide, depends on minute amounts (ppm) of impurities or stabilizers.

- Some substances are not so dangerous alone, but mundane conditions make them treachous. A spillage of liquid oxygen on an asphalt road, even days after the oxygen has evaporated, can let the asphalt detonate.

- The storage conditions changes everything. Acetylene can detonate if gaseous at >2bar or liquid. The concentration too: hydrogen peroxide gives wrong confidence because households use it at % dilution.

- The compound in the old bottle is not the one you poured. Peroxides can form meanwhile for instance.

- The hazard of most substances is not known, even for very common ones like benzene was. It's suspected after a few dozen deaths and believed after some hundreds. Then we replace knowingly dangerous substances by less known ones.

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