Scientists understand that no result is more important than the welfare of the investigators and the people around them. Safety culture is an integral part of industrial and academic jobs; however, safety training has only recently been added to chemistry classroom and laboratories. Chemistry laboratories expose workers to a variety of hazards,…

Chemicals used in academic teaching laboratories, research institutions, and industrial facilities are mostly dual-use chemicals. They provide many desired benefits but at the same time may cause adverse effects to human health and environments. In the case of Somalia, there are gaps in terms of chemical security (CS) awareness and…

Chemical waste should be reduced to minimize environmental pollution, and it is important that the amount of waste is minimized in chemistry teaching laboratories to reduce the negative impact on environment as well as the disposal costs of university. There are several ways to minimize the waste generated in chemistry teaching laboratories,…

The topic of chemistry safety was included at the margins of traditional chemistry education in China. In order to understand the concerns of the safety issues based on the new chemistry curriculum in the mainland China secondary school, this study analyzed old and new secondary chemistry curriculum standards via the Natural Language Processing…

At many universities, silver nitrate is used in teaching laboratories, and a resulting waste product is often silver chloride. Silver chloride is not a compound that can be discarded into a sink as it has harmful effects to the environment; however, commercial waste disposal is costly, and replacement of the silver nitrate reagent is expensive.…

The weeks leading up to summer break can be stressful for instructors and administrators, as they are ultimately responsible for inspecting and cleaning up their STEM education facilities to ensure a safer start the following academic year. In this article, the authors present a three-pronged approach to aid in safely closing down a makerspace or…

College laboratories are generally perceived to be low-risk environments in comparison to industrial laboratories and plant operations. However, accidents in college chemistry laboratories have revealed the safety conditions to which both students and staff may be exposed. Improving the effectiveness of laboratory safety training programs and…

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a family of synthetic chemicals consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine atoms. PCBs have been produced commercially since 1929 in hundreds of industrial applications. Their continued production in the United States was phased out in the late 1970s, and strict disposal guidelines were regulated as adverse…

This paper describes a method for determination of trihalomethanes (THMs) in drinking water via solid-phase microextraction (SPME) GC/MS as a means to develop and improve student understanding of the use of GC/MS for qualitative and quantitative analysis. In the classroom, students are introduced to SPME, GC/MS instrumentation, and the use of MS…

We demonstrate here a novel laboratory experiment for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) by using a low energy gold-sputtering method together with a modern, green, and biofriendly deep eutectic solvent (DES). The strategy is straightforward, economical, ecofriendly, rapid, and clean. It yields uniform AuNPs of 5 nm in diameter with high…

Testing water samples for arsenic contamination has become an important water quality issue worldwide. Arsenic usually occurs in very small concentrations, and a sensitive analytical method is needed. We present here a 1-day laboratory module developed to introduce Earth Sciences and/or Chemistry student undergraduates to key aspects of this…

Presented is a project-based learning (PBL) laboratory approach for an upper-division environmental chemistry or quantitative analysis course. In this work, a combined laboratory class of 11 environmental chemistry students developed a method based on published EPA methods for the extraction of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its…

Arsenic is a toxic element to which humans are primarily exposed through food and water; it occurs as a result of human activities and naturally from the earth's crust. An experiment was developed for a senior level analytical laboratory utilizing an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) for the analysis of arsenic in household…

Energy drinks, as familiar consumer products, have been widely used in laboratory courses to help promote student interest, as well as to connect lecture concepts with laboratory work. Energy drinks contain B vitamins: pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and riboflavin (vitamin B2) of which amounts are high enough to be of concern. In this work, a fast and…

The chemistry behind practical special effects in the film and television industry is discussed, along with examples of commonly used chemical demonstrations that simulate them in the laboratory. (Contains 3 figures.)