On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 1:13 PM, Wilhelm, Monique <mwilhelm**At_Symbol_Here**umflint.edu> wrote:

I am extremely pleased to hear that someone has contacted the Houston DA's office.  This is the type of thing that I wonder about.  This is an action we can take.

Another action proposed was in offering of training to school teachers.  I don't know if I am "qualified" to do that, even though I would be the one teaching these things to them if they were at my own institution of higher learning (we discontinued our sci edu programs here quite a while back).  But, I do know that somebody needs to be teaching them what we know.  I also know that schools don't always have money to hire someone like LSI to come to out to them and that most non-chemistry teachers aren't going to attend an ACS or BCCE meeting to attend training there.  So, any ideas in this avenue?  Also, any ideas for reaching out to current education programs at schools (or higher levels like accreditation agencies) to start the discussions on the importance of including science safety as part of the curriculum?

I also like the thought about contacting YouTube/Google/etc.  Is this part of what the CCS does?

I have contacted my local news channels and, of course, gotten no response.  Have others done this with any success?

Monique Wilhelm
Laboratory Manager
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
University of Michigan - Flint


-----Original Message-----
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of Stuart, Ralph
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2017 8:35 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] ACS and other resources on rainbow experiment and other demonstrations

>why do science educators think that they must do demos with flame, explosions, or the like?? I hear the excuses "We have to get the students excited about science!"

I agree that that is a core question and this excuse ignores the likelihood that as many students are turned off of science by the flame, explosions, odors, etc. as get excited about science by them. And this is not a "chemophobia" issue - I've had many situations where chemists and other lab scientists are raising health and safety concerns to me related to emissions from neighboring labs. In my opinion, chemophobia in the general public is driven by these "educational" events at least as much as by the scientific confusion that is often cited by chemistry advocates...

>To echo Monique, "What do we do?"

I notice that J Chem Ed today published an article entitled "Development, Implementation, and Assessment of General Chemistry Lab Experiments Performed in the Virtual World of Second Life" about the use of virtual labs in the Gen Chem setting. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00733

It will be interesting to read it with this conversation in mind.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts on this.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859

ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu

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