EH&S Newsletter

June 1997

Susan Martin, Director
Sim Shanks, Radiation Safety Officer

Table of Contents

Other Articles

CPSC and JAMA: Window Cord Strangulation Study

Interesting Facts?

What's REALLY Hot

Radiation Safety Training Schedule

Send EH&S an email message

Wearing Your Eye Protection

An analysis of eye injuries in GUMC labs indicates that lab staff are injured most often while working with something that is not perceived as an eye hazard. In other words, lab staff realize the dangers of working with eye-hazardous chemicals/ procedures (such as large volumes of acids, UV light, etc.) and employ adequate precautions. It is the small, apparently innocuous procedures that are overlooked.

Examples of some overlooked procedures resulting in injuries include:
· When working with cryo-preserved specimens, sudden atmospheric heating of a tube with gas inside results in rapid expansion and rupture of the tube.
· Some procedures must be performed with the hood sash open above the neck/ face for logistical reasons (thereby providing no splash protection).
· A splash can affect anyone in close proximity (not only the person performing the procedure).
· When working with or near any open container of liquid, objects/ instruments on shelves above or handled by employees can fall into the liquid causing a splash.
The staff at EH&S hopes to see you this summer; and we hope you see us too.

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Gloves in the Hall

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Go to the Office of Dean of Research homepage at http://macpost.odr.georgetown.edu/ and click on Environmental Health and Safety to check out the EH&S homepage for:

• Some safety-related humor, including the infamous Darwin Awards.
• The OSHA Laboratory Chemical Hygiene regulation. All employees have the right to review this regulation and the various rights it guarantees. (NOTE: Also useful if you have insomnia and internet access right next to your bed.).
• And More.

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Eating and drinking in laboratories is prohibited by the OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen rule, and is strongly discouraged by the OSHA Lab Chemical Hygiene regulation and NRC regulations. Violations can result in significant fines for GUMC. More importantly, contamination of food items, and subsequent ingestion, can have detrimental effects on the health of lab workers.

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Drowning is the second-leading cause of preventable injury-related death in children. More than half occur in the child’s home pool, and one-third at homes of friends, neighbors, or relatives. Over 60 percent of children who drown in pools are under age 4.

Losing sight of one’s child for just a few minutes provides enough time for a child to fall (almost silently) into a pool and lose consciousness (after being submerged for two minutes).

Irreversible brain damage occurs after 4 to 6 minutes. To prevent drownings, employ the following simple rules:

· Ensure adult supervision at all times; even when you do not expect your child to go near the pool.
· Use fences, gates, pool covers, etc., but remember a child can easily get by any one or more of these.
· Remove toys from in and around the pool when you’re not using it.
· Some alarms are very effective. Pool alarms are activated if anything more than ten pounds falls in it. Wrist band alarms sound if they get wet.

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Washington Post June 5. District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry said yesterday there was a "50-50" chance that curbside recycling collection will be reinstated this year as he is not certain that funding will available for the next fiscal year.

Overall Risk Is Low, but Women With Genetic Defect May Be More Vulnerable."
Washington Post 20 May Researchers for the World Health Organization found that women using the new pills (oral contraceptives introduced in 1992) showed twice the risk of venous thrombosis, a clotting problem in which clots form in the veins in the legs and could become life-threatening if they migrate and block circulation to the lungs.

Dartmouth Researcher Dies
The Associated Press, June 8

"Karen Wetterhahn, 48,died Sunday at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center of complications resulting from mercury (dimethylmercury) poisoning”, Dartmouth said. The poisoning may have resulted from a lab spill that occurred last summer. She had been hospitalized since late January.
"Wetterhahn joined Dartmouth's faculty in 1976 and was a past officer of the American Association for Cancer Research and the author of more than 85 research papers. In 1990, she co-founded the Women in Science Project, which aims to increase the number of women majoring in and taking courses in the sciences at the college. She is survived by her husband, daughter and son.

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As many of us prepare to use our charcoal grills for the first time this year, some basic truths about grilling safety are in order. The following article describes the wrong way to light a grill. The authority in the wrong way to light a grill is a guy named George Goble, a computer-person in the Purdue University engineering department.
The newspaper reported: "Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in West Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill. Being engineers, they began looking for practical ways to speed up the charcoal- lighting process." "We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble said in a telephone interview. "Then we figured out that it would light faster if we used a vacuum cleaner."
They then escalated to using a propane torch, then an acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with a reducing agent (the charcoal). By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But in the world of competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the mustard.
"Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen. This is the form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees below zero and 600 times as dense as regular oxygen. In terms of releasing energy, pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equivalent of throwing a live squirrel into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers." At one time Goble had a World Wide Web page (http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/) with photographs and a video of himself using a bucket attached to a 10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for ignition.
What followed was the most impressive charcoal- lighting that the reporter had ever seen, featuring a large fireball that according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. "The charcoal was ready for cooking in (this a has got to be a world record) 3 seconds."
Goble used the same technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. All that's left is a circle of charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it.” "Basically, the grill vaporized," said Goble. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for a refund."
According to the reporter, "looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked up with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the engineers' picnic site. But also, I was proud of my country for producing guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it take for guys in less-advanced nations to spit."
"Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will engineers come up with a new, more powerful charcoal-lighting technology? It's something for all of us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our hamburgers, every now and then glancing in the direction of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a mushroom cloud."

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Or email a message to: thompsonp@odrge.odr.georgetown.edu