Small Foundry Fire Provides Big Safety Lessons

A fire occurred recently in the Molecular Foundry when a postdoc placed a plastic graduated cylinder on a combination hot plate/magnetic stirrer, intending only to stir the contents. The postdoc had not noticed that the heat was turned on via the combination unit. Within 10 minutes, the plastic melted and started to smolder and the fire alarm was triggered. While the resulting fire was small, it did cause a one-hour evacuation of the entire facility and triggered an Occurrence Report. Lessons learned? Always use a single purpose stirrer rather than a combination unit when heat would damage the container or the contents. Always consider the potential safety problems during all phases of research planning and execution.

For each part of an experiment, ask yourself :

• What could go wrong?
• How likely is each failure mode?
• How serious would be the resulting accident?
• How can I eliminate the hazard, reduce the probability of the event or limit the consequences?