University laboratories in the United States have suffered nearly 120 explosions, fires, and chemical releases in the past decade, according to a federal tally. But until late last year, the number of criminal charges filed over lapses in laboratory safety was zero.
Frustrated safety experts see a connection between those two statistics. Universities and their researchers don’t take lab safety seriously, the safety experts say, and nobody has really ever forced them to.
“The vast majority of the research institutions and faculty still do not get it,” says Neal R. Langerman, president of Advanced Chemical Safety Inc., a consulting firm that promotes laboratory safety in corporate and university settings.
Attitudes may be about to change, however. In a move that grabbed the attention of universities nationwide, local prosecutors filed criminal charges in December against the University of California at Los Angeles and a star chemistry professor there, Patrick G. Harran, over the accidental death of a 23-year-old scientist in Mr. Harran’s lab.
The victim, Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji, was a staff research assistant. She died from burns suffered in December 2008 after she spilled a chemical compound that ignites suddenly when exposed to air. The severity of her injuries was compounded by the fact that she was not wearing a protective lab-safety coat. Her synthetic sweater caught fire and melted onto her skin.
Mr. Harran and UCLA face three separate charges: willful failure to provide employee-safety training, willful failure to correct unsafe conditions, and willful failure to ensure that employees wore appropriate protective clothing. If convicted, the university faces up to $4.5-million in fines, while Mr. Harran faces up to four and a half years in prison. University officials have called the accident a tragedy and the charges unwarranted, though they and Mr. Harran have declined to discuss the matter in detail. No pleas have yet been entered in the case.
Because the charges are unprecedented, safety experts are closely watching the case, which they see as a pivotal development after decades of exasperating efforts to get universities to take lab safety seriously.
“It’s no fun being first at certain things,” said James A. Kaufman, president of the Laboratory Safety Institute, a nonprofit provider of safety training in educational settings. Mr. Kaufman, a retired professor of chemistry at Curry College, expressed some sympathy for Mr. Harran, but he also said, “There are certain things where somebody goes first and society changes.”
One of the challenges posed by the criminal case could be apportioning blame, if the court finds any, between the university and Mr. Harran. There’s evidence that Mr. Harran may have knowingly neglected the very danger that killed Ms. Sangji: University safety inspectors reported visiting his lab two months before the accident and discovering the routine failure of his workers to wear lab coats, among other violations.
But UCLA, like most institutions in the country, could also have done much more to make labs safe, Mr. Kaufman said. Most universities have offices and rules governing safety, and UCLA was no exception, he said. But unlike private industry, he said, universities don’t enforce daily compliance by making safety performance an integral part of hiring, retention, and promotion processes.
U.S. Agency Planned Review
The charges against Mr. Harran and UCLA aren’t the only sign that people and oversight agencies may be getting serious about changing attitudes and cultures. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was already planning a review of problems at university labs in January 2010 when a graduate student at Texas Tech University accidentally detonated some explosive materials, leaving him with three missing fingers, a perforated eye, and burns on his hands and face.
The board counted just under 120 accidents since 2001 at university labs, although some safety experts say the actual number is probably much higher. Board officials issued a report in October 2011 focusing on the Texas Tech case. The report offered a series of recommendations, including a call for the American Chemical Society to develop a comprehensive new safety approach.
Mr. Langerman is working with the chemical society on its response, which will include a new safety-certification program that he expects will be ready by the end of next year. The society hopes the program will become a standard component of the university curriculum for researchers.
Major university associations also see the need to confront complacency. This month the National Association of College and University Business Officers led other groups, including the American Council on Education, in offering an online seminar in which campus safety officers and outside legal experts portrayed the UCLA case as a clear sign that universities can’t continue with business as usual.
The UCLA charges “really sent a shock wave through the academic sector,” David J. Monz, an environmental lawyer who counsels colleges and universities, told the seminar, which was produced by the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association.
Mr. Langerman agrees, but said he expects that the shock will be short-lived if UCLA and Mr. Harran are not convicted. “Harran is a brilliant organic chemist,” said Mr. Langerman, a former associate professor of chemistry at Utah State University who said he had made a point of reading through Mr. Harran’s record of published articles. “I am truly in awe of what his people produce.” And if Mr. Harran avoids a conviction, Mr. Langerman said, his stellar academic career should continue unabated.
Universities around the country, in turn, could conclude that there’s no compelling need to change, he said. “If all he gets is a slap on the wrist,” Mr. Langerman said, “it’s my opinion that the long-term impact will be very minimal.”
Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Before the accident there, Texas Tech was among the overwhelming majority of institutions confident in its existing safety policies, said Dominick J. Casadonte Jr., a Texas Tech chemistry professor who was serving as his department’s chairman when the January 2010 explosion maimed the graduate student, Preston Brown.
At the time, Mr. Brown was inexperienced with the explosive materials and had not received any formal training in their use, the Chemical Safety Board said in its report. He mixed a greater concentration of the explosive compound than the two principal investigators had set as their limit, though it was not clear that limit had been explained to him, the report said. Mr. Brown had also removed his safety glasses at the time of the explosion, it said.
Texas Tech did have a series of safety policies in place at the time, Mr. Casadonte said during the seminar hosted by the business-officers association. The university required students to take a course on research ethics and mandatory safety classes, he said. But what had been face-to-face safety training became a computer-based system in 2006, he said. And the department’s chemical-safety committee “was ineffective in its scope,” Mr. Casadonte said. “It in fact rarely met during my time as department chair, and we sort of had the policy of, If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Mr. Brown’s accident changed all that, even though no legal action resulted. Mr. Casadonte listed a series of new safety policies at Texas Tech, including the inclusion of safety information in tenure-and-promotion packages, as well as in theses and dissertations.
In the UCLA case, California’s workplace-safety agency quickly investigated the accident that killed Ms. Sangji and fined the university nearly $32,000. In December 2009, the agency gave the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office its report on the possibility of criminal charges. Ms. Sangji’s sister, Naveen F. Sangji, a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, took the lead among family members pressing prosecutors to pursue a criminal case. Even so, the district attorney waited until this past December 27, two days before the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations, before filing the charges.
Amid reports that his lawyer and the prosecutors were working on a plea bargain. Mr. Harran made another court appearance last week, asking for more time. The judge, Shelly B. Torrealba, granted the request, setting June 7 as the new date for arraignment, at which time the university and Mr. Harran would be expected to enter their pleas.
