Incorporating safety into the general chemistry curriculum

Providing safety instruction is relatively easy, but having safety become second nature to the student is very difficult. Over time laboratory safety has improved particularly in the general laboratory curriculum. However, having key elements and concepts of safety carry over into other aspects of the student's environment and building a safety culture is still in development. One approach designed to augment current safety programs has been applied to the general laboratory curriculum. This approach incorporates a safety information “scavenger hunt” and introduction of a generalized hazard analysis. Use of these tools has shown that elements of a safety culture can be instilled with a minimum of disruption in the current program.