Who would have anticipated a year ago that the term “PPE” would be so widely known and a topic of general conversation? As everyone works on implementing the many changes to instruction that are resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, remember to keep chemical safety at the forefront for laboratory work of all kinds, and also for demonstrations. As the use of videos proliferate, you might consider reviewing the Committee on Chemical Safety’s rubric for Assessing Chemical Demonstration Videos (PDF) to help guide your choices – or even have your students use the rubric on several videos to improve their safety awareness!

The Safety Committee meets at each National Meeting, seeking to pursue its vision of education that embeds accurate chemical safety instruction at all educational levels and implement its mission to provide resources and strategies to chemical and science educators in order to prepare chemists and others to function safely while using chemicals. Members of the Safety Committee have been actively presenting talks and workshops as well as hosting symposia at National and Regional ACS meetings and other venues. If you have a topic related to safety in education, please consider contributing to one of these sessions -- we’d love to hear from you at an upcoming meeting.

The Safety Committee is working on a range of projects at the intersection of safety and education. Of particular interest at the moment are online workshops about ACS safety resources and identifying other needs of the safety education community. Additional safety initiatives in which you might be interested:

• The Committee on Professional Training continues to work on revisions to the guidelines – how will the core safety value be expressed in our curricula and assessment – watch for your opportunities to provide comments on the draft guidelines over the next couple of years.
• Although the production of new ACS college level safety videos has been delayed by COVID-19, six videos for use in high schools are available and might be of interest.
• While the Chemical Health and Safety Exam from the Exams Institute is only suitable for in-person administration, which may make it harder for schools using online and remote modes of instruction, we hope that many institutions will find an opportunity to assess their programs and submit norming data.

The Safety Committee wants to hear about DivCHED’s safety interests and needs. Anyone interested in safety education and interested in getting involved is welcome to attend our committee meetings at the National Meetings, or contact the Committee co-chairs and we will try to connect you with appropriate folks and projects.

Susan D. Wiediger, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

David C. Finster
Professor Emeritus
Department of Chemistry
Wittenberg University