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speaking with my chemist's hat on... crying 'wimp' is one of the cultural problems we have when it comes to health and safety.

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I was kidding. I however do think refusing to work with a uniquely useful substance because of the risks, without considering risk mitigation, is irrational and can impede good science.

Derek blogged about other (truly) fearsome stuff too such as FOOF

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...

cool. thx for replying back - maybe i'm a bit sensitive about this sort of thing but i'm tired of seeing students put in dangerous situations and then if/when something bad happens they're labelled 'professionals' and their supervisor walks off scott free. once i got out of academia and did some real H&S training and assessments I was amazed at how badly I'd been trained over a decade or so of chem.

I think we both agree that occupational health and safety, as it's generally practiced in academia, is an abomination; the sooner academia comes up to industry standards, the better.

Reading in C&EN about completely preventable accidents that happen in the ivory tower is both frustrating and heartbreaking.

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