Dbq Essay: Should We Prevent Laboratory Safety?

Every year one person dies from an accident in a laboratory. More than 100 people get injured. These accidents occur because the people in these labs do not know the proper laboratory safety procedures. The lab safety rules provided do not prevent the many deaths and injuries that occur each year, schools do not take action until after some sort of accident occurs, and lastly, students and professionals are not informed how important lab safety is. Although not very many incidents occur in labs across the country, the number should not be as high as it is. In document A, a year old Yale student died of suffocation in a lab. The girl was not inexperienced with the equipment, but she was probably alone at night. If the lab rules were taught properly, she might not have lost her life that night. ANother young UCLA student lost her life in a lab as well (Doc C). With proper lab safety rules these students and others could have easily prevented these incidents from occurring. Rather than taking action before something happens, many schools around the country wait until after a life threatening incident to take action. At UCLA, after a student dies in a lab, the officials discovered that there was another student death not reported which occurred more than year before the recent 23 year old student (Doc C). In document A, it explains how

A quote by James Gibson, UCLA’s director of environmental health and safety, describes how difficult it is to emphasize how important lab rules are (Doc A). In 2009, a geneticist named Malcolm Casadaban, died from an infection not thought to infect adults. The researcher was known for not wearing his gloves in the lab which was most likely his cause for infection and death (Doc B). This man was probably always taught the same rules and not warned about what could happen if he did not wear gloves. If he was taught the proper way maybe he would not have died that