Sheri Sangji
On December 29, 2008, Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji was working on a chemical synthesis in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles.
One of the reagents she was using was tert-butyllithium (t-BuLi), which ignites spontaneously in air. It was likely only the second time she had handled such a hazardous substance.
She had graduated from college a few months earlier and was working in the lab as a staff scientist while applying to law schools.She was transferring a total of 160 mL of t-BuLi solution using a 60 mL plastic syringe, according to her lab notebook.
The plunger came out of the syringe barrel and the t-BuLi was exposed to the atmosphere. The t-BuLi ignited, along with Sangji’s clothes. She wore nitrile gloves, no lab coat, and possibly no eye protection. A lab mate attempted to use a lab coat to smother the fire, then started pouring water on Sangji from a nearby sink.
“Her clothing from the waist up was largely burned off, and large blisters were forming on her abdomen and hands—the skin seemed to be separating from her hands,” the lab supervisor, chemistry professor Patrick Harran, later recalled for investigators.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined UCLA $31,875 for workplace safety violations leading to Sangji’s death. The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged the University of California system and Harran for felony violations of California labor laws. Both cases settled.
Sangji died from her injuries on January 16, 2009. She was 23 years old.
Sangji’s death and the felony charges rocked the chemistry community. Whether they inspired long-term changes in experimental planning and practices is unclear.
Her death pushed some chemists to try to improve academic lab safety culture to prevent similar accidents at their own institutions and beyond.
Yet large-scale, systemic change remains elusive, as demonstrated by grievous incidents in the decade since Sangji’s death.
Here are a few of the lab accidents that have occurred since 2008, but there are many more.
- Postdoctoral researcher Meng Xiangjian died in a hydrogen explosion at Tsinghua University in 2015.
- Graduate student Preston Brown lost three fingers and damaged his eyes in a nickel hydrazine perchlorate explosion at Texas Tech University in 2010.
[the list is continued below]
- Postdoc Thea Ekins-Coward lost one of her arms in a hydrogen-oxygen gas mixture explosion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2016.
- A student was working on an experiment with sodium hydroxide at the University of Utah in July 2017. As the student carried a beaker across the lab, some of it splashed and landed in his eye. His cornea was severely burned. Two months before that accident, the lab was inspected and found to have nine major deficiencies.
- A student was injured in a fire brought on by a laboratory accident at Northwestern University on September 7, 2020. The University said the student suffered burns to his hands, arms, torso and neck
- Gas cylinder explosion at a lab in Bengaluru, India, on December 5, 2020. Manoj Kumar was flung 20 feet and died instantly. Three other researchers were taken to the hospital with burns and fractures and needed surgery and intensive care.
- On August 10, 2021, a student at
Emory University was injured when an unknown chemical exploded inside a beaker.
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