Chemistry: Demo: Laboratory Safety

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We at Thinkwell thought it might be useful to you as the student if we made a series of demonstrations showing lab technique. The first lab technique always is safety. Do things safely. In the videos that you're going to see very often we haven't gone to the extreme of being absolutely safe. Mostly we've done that for the sake of clarity so that you could see what we were doing. But in the laboratory you're always going to wear these, goggles, and you might want to wear plastic gloves or rubber gloves if you are going to work with things that are going to burn your skin.
Now the other thing about what we're doing in the laboratory demos that you're going to see, is that we're almost always working with very innocuous compounds, things like food coloring, sugar and salt and stuff like that and so those things aren't dangerous. But the key is that we're aware of the dangers because we're trained scientists. You're just developing as scientists so you need to pay particular attention to think and be aware of what's going on.
Something else that you might consider investing in is a lab coat if you want to protect your clothes. That's a good idea. And probably you're not allowed to wear short pants. You should wear long pants and you should wear shoes, not sandals or go barefoot or something like that. That's for your protection because if you spill something on your leg, and it's your bare leg, your skin is being attacked by whatever you've spilled on it. If it's your pants, you might have a few seconds to get over to rinse off that compound off of your leg. So think about wearing extra clothing and eye protection when you're working in the laboratory.
Now the other thing that you ought to think about are some safety devices and safety equipment that's available to you in the laboratory. Probably there's a fire extinguisher and you ought to figure out where it is. Probably or maybe there's a fire blanket, and not only should you figure out where it is, you should understand how to use it. If you catch on fire, you don't have time to think about how to use a fire blanket. You have to know ahead of time.
And then finally, two other things that are almost assuredly in the lab or nearby, one is a safety shower so if you happen to splash something on yourself on your whole body, run to the safety shower, turn on that water and it will just dump a bunch of water on you. Water is the first line of defense. If you splash something on yourself, if someone else splashes something on you, you don't know what it is but you don't know whether it's going to hurt you or not, just get water on it. Put your arm in the sink. Splash water on your face. Get into the safety shower if absolutely necessary but rinse it off. That's the first place to start.
The last piece of equipment that not only do you need to know where it is, you need to know how to use it is the eyewash. What an eyewash is, it's a device that's dedicated to pouring water, or shooting water, upwards and at an angle so that it would clear out your eyes. Your eyes are probably the most fragile part of your body. If you get something in your eyes, you have a small amount of time to make sure you get that stuff out of your eyes. So find out where the eyewash is and how to use it.
Anyway, the last thing I'd like to say is have some fun. Being in the laboratory can be a lot of fun and certainly it can be very exciting. Not exciting in a bad, scary way. But you're going to learn some stuff and hopefully the videos that you're going to see of the lab techniques we demonstrate, you'll find useful when you get into the laboratory yourself.
Lab Instructional Demonstrations
Lab Demos
CIA Demonstration: Laboratory Safety Page [1 of 1]