It is not uncommon to hear a news of tragic accident happening in university laboratories. Very recently, an accident happened in Sejong University, where an explosion hurt 8 people including graduate and undergraduate students in the lab. An investigation reveals that the explosion has been related to an experiment of boiling sulfuric acid carried by one of injured students for his experiment purpose. Similar accidents are frequently found all over the world. Two years ago, a Yale university student was killed in a chemistry lab accident, although it was known that Yale kept a relatively strong safety policy.
Considering CBNU safety situation, it is hard to say we have a high standard in safety inside the campus, particularly in the laboratories dealing with potentially safety-threatening environment such as electricity, high power, biohazard, and chemicals. Do we have any working safety advisory committee? Do we have a comprehensive manual for every possible safety scenario? Do we have a systematic safety survey other than just routine ones? Does a student know a number to call and a place to be gathered in case of emergency? These are so important issues, which cannot be simply put on individual responsibility of each professor managing the lab. Of course, a recent trend of acknowledging the importance of the safety in CBNU should be appreciated, but still there is a long way to go. For instance, attention should be paid to the foreign students in CBNU. Most of them cannot read nor understand the Korean language. It could be extremely dangerous if they do not have an access to the safety manual or the emergency contact, all of which are written only in Korean. Obviously, it is very urgent to let all the safety announcements, guidelines, stickers, brochures, or whatever should be reinstated in English and Korean at the same time.
More importantly, it becomes increasingly essential to have a chief control tower that oversees all the safety issues in the campus and systematically coordinates all things related to the safety ranging from assigning necessary safety classes of applicable level to staffs and students to development of safety educational processes. It is going to take some time, but we should not hesitate to make our campus a better and safer place for all of us.