News and Announcements

Lessons from UCLA

6/25/2014

Most people who work in laboratories have heard about the tragedy at UCLA in 2008, when a young laboratory worker, Sheri Sangji, had an accident while working with tert-butyllithium. She sustained severe burns over much of her body and died a couple weeks after the accident. Almost three years later, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office filed felony charges against the University of California and UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran. The University has reached a settlement on the charges against it in 2012; a settlement in the court case against Prof. Harran was announced on June 20, 2014.

The charges against Prof. Harran cited regulations in the California labor code including: failure to correct unsafe workplace conditions and procedures in a timely manner, failure to require work-appropriate clothing and personal protective equipment, and failure to provide chemical safety training to employees. This case is the first one that I am aware of that a professor has been held criminally liable for an accident that occurred to one of his employees. The settlement called for Prof. Harran to donate $10,000 to the Grossman Burn Center, perform 800 hours of community service, and several other conditions. If all of these conditions are met, the charges will be dropped.

Regardless of your opinion about the resolution of this case, it is clear that the public has safety expectations of Principal Investigators and supervisors.  DRS recommends the following as minimum steps that Principal Investigators take to demonstrate appropriate attention to safety:

  1. Identify hazards in your laboratory.
  2. Prepare written standard operating procedures (SOPs) that address the hazards and describe how to work safely. These SOPs should be part of the OSHA-required Chemical Hygiene Plan.
  3. Train the laboratory staff on these SOPs and document the training.
  4. Provide and require that all laboratory workers wear proper personnel protective equipment at all times.

Remember that DRS is your in-house consultant on laboratory safety matters. Please feel free to contact us (drs@illinois.edu or 333-2755) for assistance.

Peter Ashbrook, Director

Division of Research Safety