Letter about the experiences on lab safety

The link below takes to a letter published in Chemical Engineering News about lab safety, experience about lab safety in the college. Lab safety may be followed to a great extent in developed countries, but my personal experience during my college days is that we were never told about hazards, safety procedures, precautions to be taken in the laboratory. Now, I feel how I went through those days and what could have happened if I did something wrong.
As a safety professional, now I feel that college laboratories should have documented safety programme and should be monitored for implementation. Students should know about properties, hazards, material safety data sheets, procedures for storage-handling-disposal, emergency procedures, proper use of PPE, etc.
When we take chemicals in to a bottle or container, we should ensure that the bottle was used previously for the same chemical or better use only cleaned bottles. Otherwise, it is likely that we will be adding a chemical to the bottle that contains or was used for a chemical that is not compatible and a runaway reaction may take place leading to rupture of bottle, splashing of chemicals, hit with glass splinters, etc.
We should use proper bottle holder to move the bottles instead of holding the bottle at its lid or neck which may lead to fall of the bottles.
When chemical splashes, we should remove the contaminated cloth and wash thoroughly for atleast 15 minutes immediately and consult doctor for further treatment. There were reports in which a student received HF splash on her lab coat. Instead of removing the coat, she washed the splashed portion of the coat with some water and continued her work. She was found dead in her apartment later. The reason listed was that though the contaminated coat was washed, the vapors continued to emanate from her coat which she did not notice but inhaled and this caused edema. Chemicals like HF, phosgene, etc exhibit delayed effects causing respiratory problems and eventually lead to death.
Studies show that even after 15 minutes of thorough wash, only about 95% of the splashed chemical can be washed. Hence, prominent display of 'wash for atleast 15 minutes' should be displayed in the lab and near the emergency shower/eye wash fountain or the rack containing eye wash bottles.




http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i44/Lab-Safety-UCLA-Accident.html