Bhakti >> In Love Chemistry

Laboratories are generally safe places, but sometimes a minor mistake can have consequences that go far beyond allergies or rashes. This is a selection of tragic incidents reported in the media over the past 15 years; they demonstrate the importance of taking great care in the lab.

A research assistant died in January this year from burns sustained in a university chemistry laboratory in California. Sheharbano Sangji had been working in the lab for only a few months when the plunger popped out of the syringe she was using to transfer tert-butyl lithium — which ignites spontaneously in air — causing her gloves and jumper to catch fire.

A chance splash of primate fluids cost research assistant Elizabeth Griffin her life in a 1997 incident at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center research centre in Georgia. Because the rhesus macaques under study were caged, Griffin did not use safety glasses for the procedure being done. A piece of material contaminated with herpes B virus — probably urine or faeces — got into her eye and she died six weeks later.

Chemist Karen Wetterhahn spilt a drop of dimethylmercury on her gloved hand in 1996 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. At the time, it was not known that the chemical passes through latex, so she did not realize it had reached her skin. She fell ill five months later and died within the year.

In 2004, while drawing blood from Ebola-infected guinea pigs, Antonina Presnyakova accidentally stuck herself with the needle she was using. Presnyakova, a scientist at a virology laboratory in Russia, died two weeks later.

In 1994, a laboratory technician, working alone in a private lab in Perth, Australia, spilled hydrofluoric acid in his lap. He washed his limbs but did not apply calcium gluconate gel, the recommended treatment. The technician died 15 days later from multiple organ failure.