Safety Teams: An Approach To Engage Students in Laboratory Safety

We developed and implemented a yearlong safety program into our organic chemistry lab courses that aims to enhance student attitudes toward safety and to ensure students learn to recognize, demonstrate, and assess safe laboratory practices. This active, collaborative program involves the use of student “safety teams” and includes hands-on safety training as well as student-led safety presentations, laboratory monitoring, and postlab inspections for each lab session. Although we implemented this program in organic chemistry, one asset of this approach is its portability; it could easily be appropriately modified and implemented in nearly any science laboratory course. This article describes safety teams in detail and provides a preliminary assessment of the program’s effectiveness.