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The follwing blog post; https://www.nsta.org/blog/just-when-you-thought-your-lab-was-safer is an important reminder to laboratory teachers’, supervisors’, and administrators’ levels of awareness regarding numerous and potentially unknown safety hazards in labs. The article is useful in helping science educators seeking to educate and work with administrators who can then be advocates for change, leading to improvements in the science laboratory. To begin with, some examples of unknown or unaware potential hazards/resulting risks include; air quality, water quality, electricity, heavy metals, abestos, hazardous chemicals, personal protective equipment, walls and radiation. In looking at the article, you can find detailed entries on the following potenatial hazards I just listed, and ways to keep an eye out for them. It is important to remember that laboratories are normally potentially unsafe places, given the potential biological, chemical, and physical hazards associated with laboratory activities. This is why a potential hazard analysis, resulting risk assessment, and appropriate safety actions must be done before laboratory work is initiated.
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