Assessment of Potential Exposure to Research Chemicals in Academic Laboratories: Challenges and Opportunities for Scientists’ Health Protection

Academic chemical research, especially in the laboratories that prepare very small quantities of novel chemical compounds, potentially exposes faculty, staff and students to several substances, in special conditions of manual work, for which the established methods of industrial hygiene monitoring and of medical health protection are not entirely adequate. Academic careers in chemistry develop over several decades, entailing workers’ mobility through research projects, institutions, and countries, especially in the early phase of researchers’ lives, when important life choices, such as pregnancy and childbearing, may be strongly influenced by occupational exposure to chemicals. This pilot study explores using the experimental section of published articles as proxy of activity recording in researcher’s laboratory logbook to record individual and group occupational exposure to research chemicals. Chemical researchers use substances with complete safety information, including occupational exposure limits, substances without occupational exposure limits but with safety assessment, including hazard classification, and produce completely new, original substances as the epistemological object of chemical research, the hazards of which may not be anticipated. A pilot example exemplifies data extraction from experimental descriptions and open-source safety information. Hazard indexes for the employed substances can be used to classify and rank individual experiments, such as chemical preparations, by hazard type and semi-quantitative hazard level, with more hazardous substances having higher Hazard index. However, hazards from original new substances cannot be anticipated. This approach can be shared by researchers to keep track of past occupational exposures throughout their professional lives.