http://cen.acs.org/articles/89/web/2011/12/Charges-Brought-UCLA-Researchers-Death.html

Quote :

"Sangji’s sister, Naveen Sangji, says the charges are “the first step to hold UCLA and Harran accountable for the excruciating pain and the suffering they put Sheri through.” Naveen and her family hope that there won’t be a plea bargain and that the case will go to trial, she says, adding that “we hope that this will keep other people safe from harm and keep other families from being hurt the way ours has been.”"

I am very conflicted about this. What I can say as a fellow chemistry grad student in the same field that Sangji was in, is that the death was the combination of it being an accident but as well as that the action was not done correctly on her part. I don't know how much the prof is accountable for this, but I do think that pofs, in general, are not hands on in training students in organic chemistry and this results in many mistakes, most of which are minor burns (I have witnessed four), but some of which can be potentially deadly.

12/29/2011 2:52:52 PM

what the fuck is wrong with this country

12/29/2011 2:59:22 PM

I should sue you for asking that question, burr0.

12/29/2011 3:00:32 PM

sounds like this student fucked up all on their own.

12/29/2011 3:02:10 PM

The charges seem to focus on willful actions, but this seems to be negligence (due to trusting the people he worked with).

UCLA probably should pay them out, if they haven't done so already, but it would be a travesty if criminal charges stuck from this suit.

12/29/2011 3:03:20 PM

First off, how to you file criminal charges against a University? Who would go to jail.

Does anyone have any background information in this case? Was the student properly trained and, by university policy, who has the responsibility to train her? Why wasn't she wearing the proper safety equipment? Etc...

12/29/2011 3:05:12 PM

I'll just tuck this away in my "reasons to hate CA" drawer...

12/29/2011 3:05:22 PM

^^ most likely she was properly trained, but people just get too comfortable for "routine" experiments, and she just didn't put on her coat. I bet everyone here is aware of a situation where someone didn't use proper safety equipment because the chances of something bad happening were low.

What would be interesting is if the lab didn't have a safety shower, or it was broken.

12/29/2011 3:08:32 PM

Quote :

"Does anyone have any background information in this case? Was the student properly trained and, by university policy, who has the responsibility to train her? Why wasn't she wearing the proper safety equipment? Etc... "

She was trained, but it is the culture of these labs for other students to train you because profs are two occupied to be in lab all day. What she did was stupid, I'll be honest here, but students and post docs are negligent at times and it goes unnoticed. Profs need to exercise more QC before letting people off the leash to work on their own.

Also, you have to factor in that as a synthetic chemist there is no way working around combustable materials, so accidents such as hers could have happend to the most cautious person. It is rick you take when working with large amounts of tBuLi. But, definitely the first thing that I wold have done would put on a lab coat, work behind the shield, and then make sure somebody was around in case something went wrong.

[Edited on December 29, 2011 at 3:12 PM. Reason : df]

12/29/2011 3:11:36 PM

This looks like a useful case to bring up the issues with lab safety in universities.

Quote :

"Was the student properly trained and, by university policy, who has the responsibility to train her? "

Let's get back to the idea of a comprehensive research university. NC State has a population equal to a small town. Such a university has groups in basically every research topic they can manage (that's the point). University-wide safety classes, unfortunately, can't be any more prescriptive than "put safety first".

No one understands the dangers of the particular things they're working with in a lab better than the very researchers who are in charge of those projects. If you can't trust those people to implement a safety culture then the university administration isn't going to change that. Likewise, the people this student reported to should be the center of the investigation. The university should still have liability (because they have power on several levels to help prevent this), but it will just be financial.

If anything, I think we need more cynicism in safety training. You have to tell students "we can't guarantee your safety, only you can do that".

12/29/2011 3:17:46 PM

was there no emergency shower thing?

12/29/2011 4:02:52 PM

Quote :

"most likely she was properly trained, but people just get too comfortable for "routine" experiments, and she just didn't put on her coat. I bet everyone here is aware of a situation where someone didn't use proper safety equipment because the chances of something bad happening were low. What would be interesting is if the lab didn't have a safety shower, or it was broken."

Very well said. It's the girl's fault if she didn't wear her lab coat and/or use the safety shower. It's the university's fault if the safety shower was broken..huuuuge violation.

12/29/2011 5:54:16 PM

Quote :

"was there no emergency shower thing?"

That's what I want to know. If there was and it was working properly, what really could the university have done? She didn't follow any of the safety protocol at that point.

12/29/2011 6:35:07 PM

Yep, if the university didn't have working safety features, then they will certainly be held accountable.

Quote :

"Working with tert-butyllithium, which ignites spontaneously in air, she was drawing the chemical from a bottle into a syringe when the plunger came out of the syringe barrel (C&EN, Aug. 3, 2009, page 29). Sangji was not wearing a lab coat, and the chemical splashed onto her clothes and set them on fire. Sangji was burned on her torso, arms, and hands."

From what I gathered at NC State, foreign grad students (assuming she's foreign) are notorious for not following safety regulations, due to either language barriers or safety-culture indifference. One student in particular had a ton of violations (working alone, working after hours, and doing dangerous techniques...then repeating all of those after being warned), and would have blown up the lab, if not the whole building, if it wasn't for automatic safety valves.

All I've seen with this story was that she was alone, no lab coat, and wearing a synthetic sweater. Could be willful ignorance, or it could be ineptitude from the researcher...which is possible, seeing as how he had only been there a year:

http://www.standard.net/stories/2011/12/28/ucla-professor-charged-lab-fire-killed-staffer

Quote :

"Born and raised in Pakistan, Sangji graduated in 2008 from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and planned to become a lawyer. While applying to law schools, she took a $46,000-a-year job in a lab run by Harran, a researcher with a rising reputation in organic chemistry. Sangji was transferring up to 2 ounces of t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another when a plastic syringe came apart in her hands, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. The synthetic sweater she wore caught fire and melted onto her skin, causing second- and third-degree burns. Her death raised questions about UCLA lab-safety practices, as well as her training and supervision by professor Patrick Harran, a prominent researcher who joined the faculty in July 2008."

So, she was a lab assistant and not a student then?

http://www.ktvu.com/ap/ap/crime/prosecutors-charge-uc-ucla-professor-in-lab-death/nF9zw/

Quote :

"The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined the university nearly $32,000 in May 2009 after finding Sangji hadn't been properly trained and should have been wearing a protective lab coat."

I do think its a bit crazy to charge the guy, although we don't know the whole story.

Then there's this crazy shit:

http://www.drs.illinois.edu/css/factsheets/pdf/LearningFromUCLAScienceTechnologyChemicalEngineeringNes.pdf

Quote :

"Sangji had started work in the lab of Patrick Harran, a chemistry professor at UCLA, on Oct. 13. According to copies of Sangji’s lab notebook obtained from UCLA through a California Public Records Act request, Sangji planned in December to scale up a reaction she’d run once before"

Quote :

"At the end of December, Sangji’s goal was to generate three times that amount of material—a “moderate” scale reaction, Harran said"

Quote :

"Sangji was working on a nitrogen manifold in a fume hood in a lab on the fourth floor of UCLA’s Molecular Sciences Building. She had titrated the tBuLi twice to determine its concentration—1.69 M—and needed 159.5 mL of the reagent to react with 9.0 mL of vinyl bromide. She was drawing up the tBuLi in roughly 50-mL aliquots in a 60-mL plastic syringe equipped with a 1 .5-inch, 20-gauge needle."

No fucking wonder the needle came apart. Pulling a big syringe to what, 80% capacity with an extremely dangerous chemical?

Quote :

"For unknown reasons, the syringe plunger came out of the barrel and the tBuLi was exposed to the atmosphere. Although it wasn’t part of her experiment, an open flask of hexane was also in the hood and Sangji knocked it over. The tBuLi ignited and the solvent caught fire, as did Sangji’s clothes. She was wearing nitrile gloves, no lab coat, and no one remembers if she was wearing ey e protection. Although there was a safety shower in the lab, Sangji did not use it. Instead, Weifeng Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in Harran’s group who was cleaning up one of the lab’s benches, wrapped a lab coat around Sangji to try to put out the fire. “She was screaming and was moving around and I was attempting to wrap her tightly ,” Chen told Cal/OSHA Investigator Ramon Porras. Chen abandoned the lab coat when it started burning. He then started pouring water on Sangji from a nearby sink, while she sat on the floor."

ಠ_ಠ

Quote :

"Harran told Cal/OSHA and fire marshal investigators that the lab generally follows Aldrich Technical Bulletin AL-134 for handling air-sensitive reagents. The bulletin first recommends heating glassware in an oven to eliminate any adsorbed moisture, then cooling it in an inert atmosphere. Sangji refers in her notebook to using flame-dried flasks and the syringe found at the scene was plastic. Additionally, if a researcher is using a syringe to transfer the reagent, the bulletin says to use a 1 - to 2-footlong needle. The Cal/OSHA report says that Sangji’s was 1 .5 inches."

There are some more details about the experiment, specific air-free techniques to use, and how the professor is unsure if the girl was taught to do those techniques.

After reading that pdf a bit more, it seems that the researcher wasn't properly trained or supervised. Crazy shit

12/29/2011 6:37:18 PM

That is very sad.

12/29/2011 6:53:39 PM