SAFETY CLIMATE AND SAFETY CULTURE OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORIES OF UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

Laboratory safety could pose a high risk due to the presence of hazards, physical, electrical, chemical, etc. Such conditions expose students or university staff to potential accidents in laboratories. The lack of safety climate and safety culture among university students is one of the main contributing factors to laboratory accidents. Therefore, this research aims to assess and improve the safety climate and safety culture among undergraduate students in the Faculty of Chemical and Energy Engineering (FCEE) at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), specifically within the Separation Process and Fluid Mechanics laboratories. The assessment will focus mainly on individuals actively engaged in laboratory work -- safety attitude, awareness, behaviours, and perceptions. A set of questionnaires is a tool to collect data on these variables, i.e. safety attitude, awareness, behaviours, and perceptions. The questionnaire was used to collect student data to assess their safety climate and safety culture in the academic laboratory setting. The questionnaire consists of socio-demographic, safety attitude, safety awareness, safety behaviour, and safety perception sections. The data was analyzed by using Kruskal Wallis test, Mann Whitney U-test, and Spearman Correlation. The study found that significant differences in the safety culture of undergraduate chemical engineering students in academic laboratories were influenced by factors such as age, years of study, laboratory experience, and participation in safety training, while safety climate was significantly impacted by the length of time spent in the lab and participation in safety training.