Keeping Safety Standards Without Affecting Quality of Scientific Research

 by Raymond Libreri

There is an abundance of rules that can be applied to reduce the risk of danger arising from laboratory experiments and demonstrations.   If these rules are strictly applied in a research environment they may inhibit the scientific activity itself.   But safety can always be assured by tackling the risks themselves in a scientific manner and while clearing the activities from likely hazards, the experimenter is left free to continue the activity without inhibitions.   This demands an assessment of the potential hazards involved and this may be done by considering the type and degree of danger and what can be done to reduce the probability of accidents or hazardous exposures to reasonable levels.

  As an example I will mention radiation hazards.   The strict unscientific application of safety rules to some experiments at the Science Museum threatened to put an end to these until it could be demonstrated that management of the risks involved by a person who has good knowledge of what is being done could eliminate all the objections by those who only wanted to apply rules indiscriminately.

The book of safety rules lists many types of radiation hazards.   Low frequency sound and flashing light can trigger unpleasant effects in people.   Microwaves can heat internal organs and infrared radiation can cause skin burns.   Lasers can damage the retina of the eye and ultraviolet radiation can cause melanoma.   X-rays penetrate tissues and can cause malignant growths.   Finally radioactivity can cause severe effects by accumulation of the dose.

How can we work in the fields mentioned without bearing the full brunt of restrictions on our research?   The answer is simply by applying scientific methods to get results while working at levels that are too small to present any danger.   In all the cases mentioned the effect on the body or the human environment will not be significant if the level of the radiation is kept within levels usual in a teaching laboratory.   Since science enables us to get results using sensitive procedures combined with logic, it can be assumed that scientific work presents no danger to the scientist.   Moreover science can examine the dangers produced when its discoveries are used without due care in so called technological advances or even used with the specific purpose of harming people as in weapons research.

So the scientist's answer to those who try to restrict research with these rules is that science being for the benefit of people can never be a danger because the scientific method itself uses small samples and sensitive instruments and produces models of Nature's workings that are always human friendly.   But science can also offer its services by making the knowledge generated by research available to make technology itself  human friendly and safe.

So I would easily manage safety at the Science Museum by using the apparatus only to demonstrate scientific discoveries in the same way as was done by the original scientists themselves, that is as models representing Nature's inner workings and external manifestations.   The induction coil, for example would only be used to show electricity and its effects as present in the atmosphere.   The conversion of this potential energy into other forms such as light, sound and the chemical process is just what is happening in the natural sphere with the only difference being in  the minute scale of the laboratory model.

In conclusion the book of safety rules is to myself an appeal to Science for help in rendering technology that has abused Nature and caused widespread disaster around us to become once more human friendly.   This is achieved with a good scientific education that enables one to observe reality in an objective manner and act only when sure of the good effects.            

I say once more that the Science Museum is a safe environment where one should be able to observe the evolution of scientific thought in  quiet and comfortable surroundings.   This is the environment that every human being deserves and should strive to achieve even before the so called technological progress that is nothing but a vicious circle that only leads to despair. 

RL 10/6/2003