Factors such as the complex concentration of hazardous chemicals and precursor materials for producing drugs and the high mobility of students conducting experiments have led to the objective existence of laboratory safety risks in colleges and universities. However, some colleges and universities do not pay attention to laboratory safety, and relevant laws and regulations are lacking. The lack of management professionals and the extensive management of hazardous chemicals also lay hidden dangers for laboratory safety.
Produced by Deep Eye Studio
Written by: our reporter Jin Feng
Planning: Teng Jipu
"It's a pity." On the evening of October 24, when I saw the news screen of a material laboratory at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Lin Qin (pseudonym), a senior student at a university in Nanjing, regretted the two victims at the same time. Take a breath.
In his junior year, he and his classmates were doing light trapping experiments in the laboratory. One day at 9 o’clock in the evening, they suddenly smelled a scorched smell, and everyone finally realized that a light bulb was burnt. There are flammable and explosive materials around, I wonder if there will be a fire."
What made Lin Qinhou even more afraid was that because the experiment was designed by the students themselves, they didn't know whether it was safe or not. More importantly, there was no tutor or safety officer present at the time.
University laboratories are important cradles for inspiring innovation and the birth of scientific research results. They are also the key starting point for young students to explore scientific truths and master scientific research methods. In recent years, they have often become places for accidents such as fires and explosions.
In this year alone, many laboratory safety incidents have been reported.
During the interview, a number of relevant persons engaged in laboratory safety management and research in colleges and universities told the reporter of Science and Technology Daily that with the gradual enhancement of the scientific research capabilities of Chinese universities and the increasing investment in scientific research, the volume of laboratories has become larger and more diverse. more.
Hazardous chemicals (hereinafter referred to as hazardous chemicals), precursor materials for explosives are complex and concentrated, and the high mobility of students conducting experiments have caused the objective existence of laboratory safety risks in colleges and universities. However, some colleges and universities do not pay attention to laboratory safety. The lack of existing laws and regulations, the lack of safety management professionals, the extensive management of hazardous chemicals, and the hidden dangers for laboratory safety.
Vulnerabilities in storage and use of hazardous chemicals
Need to have laboratory management laws and regulations for colleges and universities, and calibrate the amount of dangerous goods in the laboratory
Chemical safety issues accounted for 34.5%, safety facility construction issues accounted for 12%, regulations and safety inspection issues accounted for 11.1%, environmental infrastructure issues accounted for 10.9%...
In the laboratory safety inspections conducted by the Department of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education on 75 colleges and universities directly under the Ministry of Education for three consecutive years from 2015 to 2017, these four major issues accounted for more than 10%.
Among the 62 comprehensive or technological colleges and universities inspected, 100% of the schools have chemical safety management problems, including the storage of chemical reagents and non-standard gas management.
"To this day, the management of hazardous chemicals is still a hard-hit area." Former director of the Laboratory and Equipment Management Office of Zhejiang University, who has participated in the safety inspection of colleges and universities for many years, and the director of the first scientific research laboratory safety technology expert committee of the Ministry of Education in 2016 Feng Jianyue told the reporter of Science and Technology Daily that there is still a lack of effective supervision in the procurement, storage, use, and disposal of hazardous chemicals.
The reporter checked the literature and found that according to the statistics of researchers, in recent years, more than 50% of laboratory accidents in colleges and universities have been caused by improper storage and use of hazardous chemicals.
Zhu Guoqing, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Public Safety and Fire Protection, School of Safety Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, and a special researcher of the Fire Rescue Bureau of the Emergency Management Department, felt the same.
"At present, the use, storage, recycling and management of hazardous chemicals in schools and research institutes cannot be strictly implemented in accordance with the relevant provisions of the "Regulations on the Safety Management of Hazardous Chemicals", especially the storage of specialized warehouses and the management of designated personnel are basically difficult to implement. In place. In most cases, it is handled by various colleges and grassroots units as appropriate, and teachers or students take part-time management. Therefore, loopholes are inevitable." Zhu Guoqing said.
This is not alarmist. A university laboratory safety management expert told a reporter from Science and Technology Daily that in order to find out about the school’s hazardous chemicals, he led a team to develop a chemical inventory device and spent two years organizing departments involved in chemicals. Health, thoroughly inventory the chemicals in the laboratory.
"As a result, a lot of controlled chemicals were cleared, including highly toxic drugs. Regular cleaning of these hidden dangers is equivalent to helping the laboratory'physical examination', which can prevent risks." The expert said.
However, this reflects the difficulty of supervision to a certain extent.
"Although the country’s current "Safety Production Law", "Fire Protection Law", "Hazardous Chemicals Safety Management Regulations" and other laws and regulations all involve the management of hazardous chemicals, they are mainly aimed at the supervision of enterprises. Currently, there is no specific target for schools and scientific research institutions. There are very clear and completely corresponding regulations on the use of hazardous chemicals to carry out scientific experiments, and there are still blind spots in supervision in this regard." Zhu Guoqing said.
For this reason, Qiao Xu, a chemical expert and president of Nanjing University of Technology, suggested: “There are many types of chemicals in university laboratories, and there are large differences in risk. If standards can be issued to stipulate the safety test dosage of various hazardous chemicals, it may be possible to take both scientific research and safety into consideration. "At present, he is also leading the team to conduct research on how to make chemical installations use the least hazardous chemicals and achieve the highest and safest output.
This coincides with the idea of Yu Baolong, Director of the Assets and Industry Management Office of Nanjing Medical University: “There have been several laboratory accidents in colleges and universities, which are all related to the use of hazardous chemicals. The management methods of hazardous chemicals and the total use standards of hazardous chemicals in laboratories, such as the temporary storage limits and storage conditions for hazardous chemicals in laboratories.”
Feng Jianyue believes that in the sales process, businesses should introduce small-dose packaging of hazardous chemicals that require scientific research to strengthen management and control from the source of procurement.
Lack of fire protection and safety protection design
Newly-built laboratories involving dangerous goods should be built separately and assigned a dedicated person and post for management
Zhou Zheng (pseudonym), a professor of analytical chemistry research at a well-known university in the eastern province, now enters the laboratory the first thing every day is to check whether the students put the equipment and reagents in place the night before.
If you find any omissions or potential safety hazards, immediately raise your phone to "capture the current situation" and send the photo to the WeChat group.
But he found that it was not all his students who had problems.
"I entered the laboratory several times and found that the water in the chemical laboratory upstairs had leaked. Our neighboring organic laboratory often had reagents volatilized and the smell was too great." Zhou Zheng said.
Zhou Zheng’s previous laboratory building was left after the Department of Mathematics was vacated. The School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering moved the laboratory in after the renovation. “After the renovation of ventilation and leakage prevention, the safety of the laboratory has been improved. Defects.” Zhou Zheng’s laboratory finally moved after encountering the aforementioned small “accidents”.
Zhou Zheng's experience, to a certain extent, reflects the real pain of the hardware layout of college laboratories.
With the improvement of my country's scientific and technological research and development level, especially the rapid development of interdisciplinary, more and more cutting-edge topics are being carried out in scientific research laboratories of universities.
Statistics show that the total number of laboratories in ordinary undergraduate colleges and universities across the country has increased from 24,731 in 2007 to 36,953 in 2018, an increase of 27%; the total area of laboratories in ordinary colleges and universities nationwide has increased from 22.85 million square meters in 2007 to 37.78 million square meters in 2018, an increase of 65%.
There is a big gap between the surge in the number of laboratories and the limited construction land for colleges and universities and traditional building functions.
"In the planning and construction of most scientific research institutes in universities, the dangers and safety protection measures of laboratories are not fully considered. Most laboratories and school teaching, office, conference and other densely populated places are mixed in the same building. Many laboratories It involves the use and storage of flammable and explosive dangerous goods, which increases the difficulty of management and the risk of safety. Once an accident occurs, it is very likely to increase the casualties and disaster losses." In Zhu Guoqing’s view, if the early construction of colleges and universities Lack of tailor-made planning and design for the laboratory, then the lack of later protective measures has increased the risk of disasters.
According to Article 5.2.5 of the "Scientific Research Building Design Standards" (JGJ 91-2019) of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, when a laboratory prone to fire, explosion, extremely low temperature and other hazardous chemicals causing accidents is adjacent to other buildings, it must Form an independent protective unit.
At the same time, laboratories prone to fire, explosion or hypoxia risk should be equipped with independent ventilation systems, and laboratories with explosion risk should be equipped with pressure relief facilities...
But in the eyes of experts, reality is not ideal.
"Many universities and scientific research institutes have not set up laboratories with fire and explosion hazards separately from the main building, or set up independent protection units in different regions." Zhu Guoqing said.
Zhu Guoqing suggested that laboratories involving dangerous goods should be built in a single building or a group of buildings in accordance with relevant national regulations, and should not be mixed with ordinary civil buildings such as teaching and office buildings, and strictly managed by dedicated personnel and dedicated posts in accordance with relevant national management standards. .
Schools that do not have the conditions for the time being can transform their existing buildings into special experimental buildings involving hazardous materials in accordance with the requirements of the regulations after expert argumentation.
"According to the requirements for explosion protection, laboratories involving fire and explosion hazards should generally be single-story or multi-story buildings, and they must be designed in accordance with the protection unit depending on the type of the laboratory. The hazardous laboratories must have dedicated personnel and dedicated post management, and the management personnel must Relatively fixed and reduced job turnover.” Zhu Guoqing also emphasized that it is necessary to establish a complete closed-loop management procedure for the procurement, warehousing, storage, requisition, use, recycling, and waste disposal of hazardous materials.
Risk-related laboratories should be managed and operated uniformly by the school, and laboratory operation management mechanisms such as application, demonstration, approval, operation, supervision, and punishment of dangerous experiments should be established.
"Danger-related experiments should be conducted by specialized experiment teachers in strict accordance with the procedures and experimental plans, rather than by subject teachers who have not received safety training and long-term training. Subject teachers who participate in experiments must also obey the laboratory’s instructions. The guidance and supervision of specialized experiment teachers." Zhu Guoqing said.
Risk assessment of new projects is difficult to implement
Strengthen access management, and classify and categorize the management of different risk laboratories
"Scientific experiments have a strong exploratory nature, and we must always find new scientific laws in the unknown. Exploration is risky. For example, temperature and pressure are the most likely to cause energy accumulation. If they are not released in time, they will explode; and For example, in the process of scale-up tests from small scale to pilot scale, due to improper volume control and unreasonable correction of condition parameters, accidents may also occur; even if the physical and mental condition of the operator is not good that day, it may also cause accidents." Feng Jianyue It is believed that the value of scientific research lies in exploration and innovation, and sometimes risks are unpredictable, so it is particularly important to improve safety awareness and prevent problems before they occur.
If mankind's exploration of unknown science is an adventure, then effective risk control may be able to make this adventure stable and far-reaching.
In 2019, the Ministry of Education issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Safety of University Laboratories", requiring laboratories to conduct risk assessments of the teaching and research activities carried out, and establish a safety access for laboratory personnel and a management mechanism for the experimental process.
Before launching new experimental projects, laboratories must conduct risk assessments, clarify potential safety hazards and countermeasures...
Although the requirements are first, reality is more skinny than ideal.
An unnamed person in the university industry gave an example. As for the risk assessment before the experiment, it takes manpower and material resources to formulate the assessment rules and implement the assessment of each new project. For various reasons, it is difficult to implement the assessment.
Many experts also pointed out that on the one hand, it is difficult to establish evaluation standards, and on the other hand, there is a lack of external supervision and restraint mechanisms.
"Universities have many scientific research projects every year. The research team should know their own projects best. They need to have detailed control over risks in personnel, machinery and equipment, raw material management, methods and processes, and environmental risks before launching new projects, and then the school's science and technology department Review and put forward regulatory requirements, but there are no hard and fast rules yet.” Some experts believe that “it is not difficult to establish rules. For example, according to the relevant provisions of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, all research involving animal experiments must be Complete the experimental animal ethics review. Can the safety assessment of the new project also be restricted by referring to this kind of thinking?"
There are also laboratories with different risk levels in universities that need to be filled by rules.
"Laboratories involving hazardous chemicals, pathogenic microorganisms, radioactive sources, and special equipment are currently the most important safety hazards in college laboratories. However, the current management of these four types of laboratories is scattered in various national laws and regulations. There is no specific unified management standard for the classification and classification of laboratories in universities." Feng Jianyue believes that the introduction of the classification and classification management standards for college laboratories will facilitate the sorting out of areas that need key prevention, and allocate key manpower and equipment for management.
"Some colleges and universities are also formulating detailed standards and requirements, but it will take some time to promote."
If the demand for professional supervision calls for the promulgation of technical standards, then whether supervision can be implemented depends on the precise "marking" of professionals.
Ideally, as the "safety steward" of college laboratories, laboratory safety managers must be able to formulate safety and fire protection standards, organize inspections, supervise rectification, and train teachers and students.
However, during the interview, many industry experts told reporters that “lack of personnel and lack of professional talents” is another bottleneck that plagues the professionalization of laboratory safety in colleges and universities. Many colleges and universities lack such personnel in security departments and laboratory management departments. The establishment of related posts is only in single digits.
In a provincial university in the eastern province, the three staff of the Asset Management Office responsible for laboratory safety are responsible for the management of more than 700 laboratories on the campus.
At the same time, these positions lack talents with a background in fire engineering or safety engineering.
"Insufficient professional talents have led to superficial and procedural supervision and inspection of safety and fire protection. Real problems cannot be seen, no practical solutions can be put forward, and it is difficult to find hidden accidents and correct them in time." Some experts said.
"In fact, the requirements for this position are very comprehensive. With more and more interdisciplinary research and exploration, universities should also set up laboratory safety management talents in different professional directions, or form safety management committees to absorb people from different professional backgrounds. Experts are involved in management.” suggested Lan Minbo, a professor at East China University of Science and Technology.