Lab injuries.

To be honest, many other chemists do far more dangerous work than I do. As a bioinorganic chemist, the biggest constant safety issue that I work with is a Schlenk line that is too big for a hood. But yesterday was a good reminder of how dangerous a lot of the materials my lab works with.

Luckily, in this particular incident, everyone's ok. Let me start out with that. One of my labmates accidentally dropped a beaker into a base bath, which caused the base bath to splash onto her face (she was wearing goggles, thank goodness). Unfortunately, her first reaction was to swipe at her face with the gloves that had base bath on them, so even though a second or two after that when she shoved her face under water, she managed to burn herself. Luckily, nothing got in her eyes and I had my car with me yesterday, so I drove her to the ER. The ER staff was as slow as molasses, despite a call from the chem dept that we were coming and that it was a potentially time-sensitive issue. They didn't do much other than have her take a shower/stuck pH paper all over her face, and eventually let her go with a prescription for a painkiller/steroid. She's a little shaken, but it mostly looks like she got an odd sunburn and there won't be any lasting effects.

We had a really bad acid burn for a different labmate earlier this year (before I joined), but both situations were caused by accidents and compounded by instinct. It's just a frightening reminder that despite proper safety gear/training, our instincts as humans take over first before our safety training kicks in.