Identifying the Scope of Safety Issues and Challenges to Safety Management in Swedish Middle School and High School Chemistry Education

• Autores: Linda Schenk, Ivan A. Taher, Mattias Öberg
• Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 95, Nº 7, 2018, págs. 1132-1139
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Chemical safety management is an iterative process where reviews of safety deficiencies (e.g., inspection notes) and failures (e.g., injuries) guide improvement efforts. The present work investigates safety in the school chemistry laboratory through two substudies. First, we interviewed 10 Swedish middle and high school chemistry teachers about how they work with safety and accident prevention in the chemistry laboratory. Second, we analyzed the call records of the Swedish Poisons Information Centre (PIC) concerning 10–19 olds and reports regarding severe injuries and accidents submitted to the Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA). The interviewed teachers encounter problems with chemical safety related to deficiencies in organizational support, such as lack of time and resources for preventive risk management and assignment to groups that are too large. The major safety challenge was reported to lie in students’ safety behavior. Although facilities were generally well-equipped we noted outdated safety data sheets and missing written risk assessments. For 2010–2014, the PIC records identified 637 cases of chemical exposures at schools; of these, 243 (38%) concerned laboratory chemicals at school. The PIC experts on call judged 70% of the cases involving laboratory chemicals to pose a risk to the exposed students, mainly due to acids and alkali. Inhalation was the most frequent exposure route, although skin and eyes were almost equally frequent. Strikingly, PIC data identified 10 times as many cases as the SWEA injury/incident data. Hence, PIC data can provide knowledge about chemical safety incidents at schools not otherwise available.