A friend of mine who worked in a biotech lab in Europe suffered a bout, this year, of what he thought was hay fever - snuffling and runny nose, itchy and sore eyes, the usual thing - except this was in February!

He took a few days of sick leave - it was that bad - and the symptoms subsided until he went back to work and took up his experiment of enzymatic chemical synthesis where he had left off. The devastating result was far worse than the snuffles he had suffered before his sick leave: his neck and face went bright scarlet, and he started shaking and collapsed, gasping for air. Anaphylactic shock was the diagnosis. He had to leave his job. Although the lab in question has implemented very strict protein-powder handling control systems, it's the kind of accident that is almost impossible to predict and in the future may become more common.

There have been more unusual lab accidents. In December 1999, Emory University in Atlanta paid out $66,400 in fines and changed its procedures following the death two years earlier of primate researcher Elizabeth Griffin, who contracted herpes B after being hit in the eye with fecal material, urine, or saliva while putting a rhesus monkey in a cage at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center [1].

A small-scale lab accident may involve someone mixing something and getting an unexpected exothermic or explosive reaction. The results often reach the community by word of mouth and through a note in the literature. For instance, Toshi Nagata of the Institute for Molecular Science, Okazaki, Japan, recently reported an accident while following a literature procedure published 10 years ago [2]. The chemical preparation involved synthesizing a brominated bipyridine, but instead of using standard quantities, Nagata's team had scaled it down to a 10th. While they were purifying the product, the 100 ml reaction flask exploded violently, injuring one of the team in the arm. Nagata suspects that the problem lay in the formation of a peroxide by-product, which would have been less concentrated on a larger scale. Nagata wrote to Chemical & Engineering News, the flagship journal of the American Chemical Society, saying, "I do not intend to blame the authors for not describing the danger, but all chemists should be aware that this procedure could be dangerous."

Guidelines and regulations are all well and good, but what about insidious threats like this? Such incidents beg the question of how they might be predicted. Should there be stricter guidelines for the way procedures are described in the literature? If so, what might they be and how would they be applied?

In 1995, a seemingly small-scale spill of hydrofluoric acid killed a technician in Australia. He died from multiorgan failure two weeks after the incident. Several factors contributed to his unfortunate death, according to the official report. He was alone, wearing only rubber gloves and sleeve protectors but nothing covering his lap, He was working in a crowded fume hood. The lab had no emergency shower nor any calcium gluconate gel antidote available. The lessons may be obvious, but accidents happen to even the most experienced of scientists.

The slow death that befell Dartmouth chemist Karen Wetterhahn when she was exposed to a few drops of the highly toxic dimethylmercury in August 1996 took several months. Although Wetterhahn was wearing latex gloves, this compound rapidly penetrated them and was absorbed through her skin. Ironically, she was, at the time, using dimethylmercury to examine the effects of toxic metals, such as chromium, on human cells. In October of this year, Michal Wilgocki of the University of Wroclaw in Poland, a chemistry professor with thirty years' experience, died after an explosion in his laboratory. Firefighters have suggested the accident may have happened while Wilgocki was drying unstable perchlorates.

So, who ensures that rules and regulations are adhered to in order to prevent accidents? Who makes sure that the fume hoods and filters are up to a high enough standard and that the reagent bottles are stored safely?

According to Jim Kaufman of the Laboratory Safety Institute (LSI), "There are three levels of responsibility. First is management. Safety is their responsibility. Preventing accidents and injuries is their responsibility. If you manage others, you are responsible for their health and safety. You have to enforce the rules," he explains. "Second is the chemical hygiene officer and the lab's safety committee. They are advisers and recommenders. Third is everyone. Everyone needs to be responsible for health and safety. Follow the rules, report accidents, injuries, and unsafe conditions."

Organizations such as LSI (formerly the Laboratory Safety Workshop), a not-for-profit center, endeavor to provide a focus for safety in science education, work, and our everyday lives. LSI makes several assumptions about the level of knowledge of those "in the know." It says, "You know the hazards; you know the worst things that could happen; you know what to do and how to do it if they should happen; you know and use the prudent practices, protective facilities, and protective equipment needed to minimize the risks." But, when the pressure is on, there can always be a proverbial roller skate left on a stair to wreck the best of intentions.

With the ubiquity of the Internet, every lab now can have instant online access to its health and safety rules and guidelines. The Biological Safety Policy of Washington State University at Pullman is a typical example of the materials freely available. One aspect of safety that is often ignored is that while personal protective equipment (PPE) such as eye protection, lab coats, and fume hoods are usually essential, there is an alternative, and that is to design better an experiment so that the hazards are controlled without resorting to PPE. If safer materials or processes are available or the whole experiment can be enclosed, that reduces risks.

There are numerous career opportunities in the field of safety and quite a few glamorously named positions available, many of which are fairly synonymous, job-description minutiae aside. There are process and equipment safety engineers and technicians; laboratory safety officers; environmental protection agents; industrial (and chemical) hygienists; environmental, safety, and health specialists; occupational health specialists; and many others.

Most of these positions require at least a bachelor's degree in a technical subject, usually chemistry, biology, engineering, or physics, and it is, of course, possible to graduate in industrial hygiene or the related occupational safety field. One important aspect of many of these positions is that they usually require that the jobholder can physically wear appropriate PPE and be capable of functioning while wearing respiratory protection. This requirement precludes some applicants on medical grounds.

An experienced industrial hygienist might work within an institute's occupational and environmental safety office, for instance, and be responsible for coordinating support for the various laboratories and ensuring that employees, students, visitors, patients (if they are working in a hospital), and the surrounding environment are protected.

Jason Worden has just completed his first year as a laboratory safety technician at the University of Idaho and has enjoyed the experience so far. "I work at a university in the Environmental Health and Safety Office," he says. "My job includes surveying and inspecting labs on campus and testing and maintaining safety equipment. Another part of my job includes radiation safety duties, as well as responding to hazardous material emergencies and general office duties."

There are important differences between the various job descriptions though. For instance, a safety engineer deals with protecting people and property from injury and damage, and investigating incidents. An industrial hygienist, on the other hand, may be working on protecting people from more insidious threats, including injuries and illnesses that result from exposure to chemical agents or materials that may not be such an obvious hazard, such as a boiling vat of solvent outside a fume hood.

Jay Jamali is the environmental health and safety director at Enviro Safetech, a San Jose, California company. So what routes are there into safety? "I have a client who went from researcher to safety specialist in a biotech company," says Jamali. "In other cases, the safety staff have no background in biotech." He adds that the position of safety officer is usually dependent on the size of an organization or institute. "Smaller organizations assign safety to multiple site personnel," he explains, "some doing a chemical hygiene plan, some radiation safety, some blood-borne pathogen safety, some laser safety, some doing the personal protective equipment, and some the lab safety." Alternatively, outside contractors such as Enviro Safetech can take on the entire safety support operation on an as-needed basis.

Bill Paletski of the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program points out that "flexibility and diversification is your key to beginning a career and improving it in the field of safety." While not belittling education, he suggests, "degree after degree will not help . . . Getting your feet wet is a good start."

Many countries have regional safety departments that also inspect laboratories, while every university should have a safety officer or section. Companies too, of course, are usually bound by law to ensure the safety of their staff and visitors to their labs. Pay with a government agency, such as the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is generally not as high as with a permanent position within a nongovernmental organization, but they do offer good experience and training, according to Jamali. On the whole, though, salary is usually commensurate with experience, degrees, and initials.

"The work is very addictive," Jamali enthuses, "and very few leave the field after they get in because it gets under your skin." He adds that "The key to success is to be a generalist, specialize in one of the three [main] fields [environmental, health, and safety] and be an expert in at least two topics in your specialty."

There are many specific problems that have not previously been of major concern in lab safety. Post-September 11, however, the threat of biological and chemical terrorism has brought safety issues into sharp relief. Although most institutions are carrying on essentially as normal, security will ultimately impact on working practices in laboratories around the world. According to a spokesperson for Cornell University, "We're still discussing all of this at various levels, and there aren't any clear answers. The one place that's definitely involved is the College of Veterinary Medicine, where research on anthrax has been ongoing for years."

Merle Schuh, a chemist at Davidson, a small college in North Carolina, told HMS Beagle, "We have not instituted any new security measures or management procedures as a result of the increased threat of terrorism. We have always been conscious of safety considerations and lab and building security, and our present activities and procedures are deemed adequate. Since we are a small college, most students and faculty recognize each other, and any strangers to the chemistry building and other science buildings during daylight hours would generally be noticed."

Instructors at colleges and universities have a duty to emphasize and teach safety to their students. Proper education increases awareness of safety issues and motivates students to safeguard themselves and others. "By the time science students graduate," says Schuh, "ideally, their conscientiousness about safety issues should be as well developed as their skills in doing laboratory work." These days, not even the smallest or most ill-equipped lab has an excuse for failing to do its best to keep its researchers safe. But, still, in real life, there is no safety net.