CSB video tells high schoolers to speak up about chem class hazards

Washington – Injuries in high school chemistry laboratories can be avoided with good safety practices, and students should speak up when they feel unsafe, according to a new Chemical Safety Board video.

The video – After the Rainbow – features Calais Weber, who, in 2006 as a 15-year-old student, suffered burns on more than 40 percent of her body in a high school lab methanol explosion. The incident occurred during a class demonstration, when the teacher poured methanol onto an open flame to show how different mineral salts produce different-color flames when burned. The students were not wearing protective gear.

“The experiment should have been performed in the hood, there shouldn’t have been any extra accelerant at all in the classroom except the amount that was going to be used, and we all should have been wearing safety gear,” Weber said in the video. “It was definitely preventable.”

The video is a follow-up to CSB’s video Experimenting with Danger, which focuses on laboratory incidents at three major universities.