Evaluation of chemical laboratory safety based on student comprehension of chemicals labelling

A questionnaire regarding the hazard labelling of a series of chemicals found in several laboratories in the Department of Food Technology, at The Technological Educational Institution of Thessaloniki, Greece, was answered by students and laboratory staff. On an average, only one out of four students matched all the chemicals in the questionnaire with the respective hazard labels; the percentage of wrong answers for chemicals included in the curriculum was comparable to the percentage of wrong answers for chemicals not-taught. The analysis of the answers indicates that the traditional teaching of safe-handling and hazard-labelling is inadequate, and there is a need for more effective teaching methods to improve the awareness of labelling and the safe handling of chemical substances.