Lab accidents can happen to anyone, regardless of age, position, and experience. I know two close friends who had burns on their hands after an acid spill, one in middle school, and one in KAIST. My mom almost had a similar injury when a bit of her gold bracelet dissolved on the spot thanks to aqua regia. In 2008, Sheharbano Sangji, a recently-graduated lab assistant at the University of California, received second- and third-degree burns in 40% of her body after spilling a pyrophoric chemical while working without a lab coat, resulting in her death 18 days later. More than a decade after, the safety standards in academic research institutes have been significantly increased, but the level of personal safety awareness remains overwhelmingly low. We all know that lab accidents can be deadly, but why aren’t we taking safety more seriously?

The first thing that comes to mind is the ubiquity of ignoring safety rules, and the “nerdiness” associated with actually following proper lab etiquette. For instance, there were no reminders about safety rules and emergency spots in “General Chemistry Lab I” (CH101), the former being assumed to be common knowledge among students. We were only told to wear closed-toe shoes, long bottoms, lab coats, and safety goggles in every class — a good step, but definitely not enough in case of fatal accidents. In most actual research labs, the situation seems to be worse. Hardly anyone is wearing lab coats, and goggles and gloves are only worn occasionally. When seniors don’t practice the basic precautions, we feel a wrong sense of being “over-prepared” to wear protective gear all the time, even though we know that nothing is enough when it comes to safety. Although no one says it out loud, it seems “cooler” to go about our experiments without the extra layers of safety that are often annoying to follow, as if to show that we are experienced in the field.

Lab safety seems more like a duty, or even a chore, rather than an actual concern. We have the Ethics and Safety course, required to be completed by our second semester — but let’s be honest, most of us don’t even watch the videos properly, let alone remember or practice any of the precautions explained in real life. Unlike most other courses, this mandatory “course” is not directly supervised. Theoretically, the current format should work out to our advantage; it is without any pressure to get good grades and with the freedom to learn at our own pace. KAIST has also gone through the trouble of animating the videos and providing both English and Korean versions, so as good students, we should ideally show some appreciation. But amid an incessant barrage of lectures, assignments, and exams, spending hours on videos about things that can be googled within minutes seem like time that can be better spent on other tasks (except that no one ever does the googling part in the end). It’s the exact same problem with graded courses we couldn’t care any less about: do the bare minimum to pass, and then forget everything about them as soon as they’re done.

—except that safety should not be something that we forget. This brings us to another problem: the underlying thought that “It won’t happen to us.” Before a horrific event happens in close proximity, we fail to realize that we are all potential victims of the next accident that could make headlines all over the scientific community. With the lack of personal obligation, legal laws become the sole guardian of lab safety, but even they hardly accomplish what they are meant to do. Safety regulations are often not tightly enforced in academic labs, compared to their industry counterparts where more government and public interests are at stake. It makes it worse that violating safety recommendations are sometimes romanticized. Working overtime, without anyone ready to help in case of accidents, is seen as being diligent; receiving (non-threatening) injuries is seen as a form of self-sacrifice for science. When all the cards are stacked against safety, nothing is left to defend it.

We have seen that despite strict lab safety regulations, a lot of them stay theoretical and are hardly implemented by lab users. Besides a better lab auditing system, more emphasis needs to be placed on making sure that the rules are actually enforced by the head of the lab, the principal investigator (PI). While safety is the responsibility of every lab user, the PI holds more responsibility as they are whom other researchers look up to. Before starting any lab-related work, all researchers must go through the safety rules, and the PI must ensure that everyone knows how to practice them in real-life settings. The part about safety gear, handling hazardous chemicals, and what to do in case of catastrophic accidents especially need to be highlighted. To promote this responsibility, there also needs to be a more severe punishment to violators of lab regulations and more laws protecting the rights of all lab researchers, since the current protection laws are mostly skewed only in favor of the PI. On a more personal level, a healthy lab culture should be cultivated: safety is much more important than meeting deadlines, collecting publications, and “scientific martyrdom”. Ultimately, the change should begin from ourselves, as clichéd as it sounds. All the reformations done by laws and the PI would be in vain if we don’t start respecting our own safety, and taking the time to learn and practice it for our own sake.