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.
To this end, the Safety Committee will be shepherding a professional development workshop developed in conjunction with the ACS Office of Safety Programs and members of the ACS safety organizations (CCS, CHAS, DivCHED SC). This aligns with Goal 2, Strategy 1 of the 2024 Strategic Plan.
The committee meets for approximately 90 minutes in conjunction with each National ACS meeting. Our spring meeting will be a virtual meeting at 3:00 pm on Sunday, March 22, 2026.
Information provided included items such as the ACS DivCHED Meeting Conduct Policy, the upcoming need for new committee members and liaisons to the Division of Chemical Health and Safety, and AACT. In conjunction with Strategic Plan G2,S1, the professional development workshop, Developing Instructional Safety Strategies in Undergraduate Chemistry Labs, was presented at the Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting (MARM) on May 30, 2025. There were 20 participants at the workshop and was enthusiastically received.
The safety community is in the first year of using the FREE eTextbook Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students, 3rd Edition (LSCS-3). This book is available on the ACS Institute Safety website, https://institute.acs.org/acs-center/lab-safety.html. A feature of the new safety text is the incorporation of RAMP Analysis templates for experiments. These field-tested tools can be used 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 and support Strategic Plan G3,S1.
The Safety Committee will be transitioning to a new chair and creating several subcommittees to undertake the future work of the committee. These subcommittees will address the programming and presentation of the faculty workshop, Developing Instructional Safety Strategies in Undergraduate Chemistry Labs at BCCE and regional meetings; working with the programming committee on joint programming with other ACS divisions on safety topics and programs; reviewing DivCHED safety policies with an eye to update them to incorporate the RAMP framework and reviewing safety statements in JCE and other ACS pubs; liaisons to 2YC3 and AACT to develop training programs and safety materials for those constituents; and work on developing a revised committee website to make access to safety resources more streamlined.
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 providing travel and development support for the development of the faculty workshop and related materials. Marta and Rachel have been invaluable in establishing relationships with the leadership of the Committee on Chemical Safety, the Division of Chemical Health and Safety and ACS Publications to promote communication and safety programming throughout ACS. One of the fruits of the collaboration between the various safety organizations in ACS, we published an editorial in the Journal of Chemical Health and Safety - Chemical Safety Ecosystem of the American Chemical Society: A Primer (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.
We will be preparing a budget to provide registration, housing and travel for presenters of the SC professional development workshop at future regional, national and BCCE meetings.