Safety Committee Vision Statement:
Education that embeds accurate chemical safety instruction at all educational levels.
Safety Committee Mission Statement:
To provide resources and strategies to chemical and science educators in order to prepare chemists and others to function safely while using chemicals.
The committee meets for approximately 90 minutes in conjunction with each National ACS meeting. Our fall meeting was a virtual meeting on Sunday, August 18, 2024. As we did not have a quorum for the meeting, information was sent to the committee members via email.
Information provided included items such as the ACS DivCHED Meeting Conduct Policy, the upcoming need for new committee members and liaisons to the Committee on Chemical Safety, Division of Chemical Health and Safety, and AACT. Committee members were updated on the results of the DivCHED Focus Group held at the 2024 BCCE which provided feedback on a professional development workshop being developed by the ACS Office of Safety Programs in conjunction with our committee, CHAS, and CCS leadership members. Requests for possible symposia that would be appropriate for upcoming ACS meetings - national and regional – were made. Other projects including the revision of the CHED demonstrations document to use RAMP are still in process. Members were asked to review the committee webpage for suggestions and consider possible social media updates.
The chair and several members of the committee are working with the ACS Office of Safety Programs to continue development of the professional development workshop for faculty, Developing Instructional Safety Strategies in Undergraduate Chemistry Labs. This workshop based on teaching RAMP principles utilizing the ACS Guidelines for Bachelor Degree Programs and ACS Guidelines for 2 Year Colleges, will reside in the Safety Committee’s portfolio of available faculty resources. The workshop will be presented for the first time at MARM on Friday, May 30 from 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM. After the workshop assessments are analyzed, the workshop will be updated and prepared for future presentations. The workshop will also be revised by the 2YC3 Safety Committee for use with their membership. Our goal is to train other committee members and interested DivCHED members to become presenters of this workshop so that it may be offered at local, regional and BCCE meetings.
In addition to this workshop, we have been assisting in the development and field-testing of Finster and Hill’s 3rd edition of Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students (LSCS). This book is being converted to an e-Book by the ACS and will be made available at no cost to chemical educators and students. The launch of this textbook will take place during the Spring ACS Meeting.
A feature of the new text is the incorporation of RAMP Analysis templates. These were prepared and field-tested for use with the text or as stand-alone resources for the teaching laboratory. These new resources will be made available through our committee’s webpage and other ACS safety portals
There are several additional issues the committee hopes to address in the near future:
- updates of division and ACS education safety policies to reflect the inclusion of RAMP principles
- creation of a network of division members interested in safety discussions - with the aid of the ACS Office of Safety Programs
- review of safety statement requirements in J Chem Ed and other ACS texts and journals
- preparation of new page(s) for the committee website
- usage of and possible revision of the Exam Institute Safety Exam to reflect new and recent ACS safety resources for education
The committee welcomes any additional suggestions for items that need to be addressed by our committee membership.
Of great value to the committee are the cross-connections that several of our committee members have to the Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS) and to Division of Chemical Health And Safety (DivCHAS). We are extremely indebted to Marta Gmurczyk and Rachel Bocwinski of the ACS Office of Safety Programs for all their support and who help make connections with and provide information about various ACS safety-focused projects. We are working to formalize relationships with appropriate subcommittees of the Committee on Chemical Safety and the Division of Chemical Health and Safety.