LAB ACCIDENTS: FAILS AND WINS

Those of you watching Strange Angel, the CBS series about famed rocket science pioneer (and all-round weirdo) Jack Parsons, might be disappointed to learn that (spoiler alert) Parsons blew himself up in a home laboratory accident. While working on a rush order of explosive material for a film set, Parsons miscalculated so severely that paramedics discovered him minus a forearm and most of his face.

Thankfully, not all lab accidents lead to calamity. Thanks in large part to today’s stringent modern safety and hazard control measures, lab accidents have become few and far between. Some have

even been instrumental in the history of science and human progress.

BUNSEN DISCOVERS BURNER, CHEATS DEATH

Robert Bunsen, the inventor of one of the Healthcare Design 2020 world’s most ubiquitous pieces of lab equipment, was one of chemistry’s true characters. His eccentric personality resulted in enough humourous anecdotes to fill a book, entitled Bunseniana, produced by his students after his death. But Bunsen was equally famous for escaping death in a series of lab disasters.

His discovery that cyanogen gas can be formed in blast furnaces, for example, came about largely because he opened a test tube embedded in a furnace and nearly choked to death on its contents. He was prone to eye-related accidents – while working with organoarsenic compounds a tube of cacodyl and dimethylarsine cyanide blew up in his face, permanently blinding him in one eye. The other eye almost suffered the same fate when Herr Professor brought a lit candle too close to occluded hydrogen gas. Thankfully his remaining eye recovered and Bunsen could continue his completely safe practice of climbing into Icelandic water geysers and measuring their temperatures.

SOVIET SMALLPOX SHENANIGANS

In 1971, when the lab technician of Soviet research ship the Lev Berg took plankton samples in the waters of the Aral Sea, she unwittingly exposed herself to a government-produced strain of smallpox. According to General Pyotr Burgasov, the Red Army’s former chief physician, a strain of weaponised smallpox had been introduced on an island in the Aral Sea to study its effects on wildlife.

When news broke of a smallpox outbreak in towns nearby, the military investigated, discovered the accidental infection and systemically covered it up. It was only in 2002 that the full story became known thanks to an article in the New York Times.

GAS TURNS CYLINDER INTO NITROGEN MISSILE

According to an accident report doing the rounds online, the staff at Texas A&M need to pay closer attention to the state of their liquid nitrogen cylinders. When the pressure relief and rupture disks in one of their tanks failed, someone decided it would be a good idea to remove them and seal the tank off with a metal plug! The inner tank eventually expanded until it touched the outer tank and, with nowhere else for the gas to escape, it burst out the bottom, propelling the hefty chunk of metal through the ceiling, where it struck some water mains and flooded the building. The lab door and walls were blown out into the hallway and all but one of the windows was smashed. Subsequent investigations failed to find the culprit.

TERT-BUTYL LITHIUM ACCIDENTS

At least two lives have been claimed in the last decade by tert-butyl lithium, a substance that ignites when it comes into contact with air.

Meng Xiangjian, a postdoctoral student at Beijing’s Tsinghua University passed away after mishandling the compound, and Sheri Sangji, a young research assistant at UCLA fatally suffered burns to half of her body due to lax safety measures at the university. Sangji’s death, in particular, has led to increased calls for grant funding to be based on the quality of a research facility’s safety measures.

HOLIDAY + STAPH ACCIDENT = MODERN MEDICINE

Perhaps the best example of a lab accident win is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928. After long months of toil, the Scottish researcher was fed up and spontaneously decided to take a vacation, forgetting all about the staph cultures he had been working on. When he returned, Fleming was surprised to find that the cultures had transformed into a fungal growth. On closer inspection, he discovered that the fungus had killed the bacteria in its vicinity – and penicillin was born.

MAKING PLASTIC-HUNGRY ENZYMES HUNGRIER

A recent lab accident may one day remove plastic from our oceans. An enzyme called PETase, which could break down and digest plastic, was first discovered during an examination of the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis. It is believed that this enzyme was useful in the very distant past to strip the outer layers of plants. Unfortunately, PETase works too slowly to affect the largescale environmental contamination we currently experience.

Little did the researchers who discovered PETase in soil samples taken at a Japanese plastics facility know that their examination of the enzyme had tweaked its structure, making it far more efficient at breaking down plastic than before. PETase is named for its ability to digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the most common strain of plastic, but the improved strain even made short work of polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF). It is hoped that future modifications of PETase could completely remove unwanted plastic from the environment.

ASSISTANT SPILLS SELTZER, CREATES SOFT DRINK EMPIRE

Today, the Coca-Cola logo is recognisable to 96% of the world’s population. But if Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton’s lab assistant hadn’t spilled seltzer into a mixture of coca leaves and kola nuts in 1886, it would never have existed. Pemberton was experimenting with the coca and kola mixture in a bid to wean himself off morphine, which he became addicted to after sustaining wounds in the American Civil War. When an assistant spilled seltzer water on his work-in-progress, Pemberton sampled it anyway, liked the taste and began selling it at a nearby pharmacy.

ELIXIR OF LIFE TENDS TO EXPLODE

Chinese alchemists spent centuries looking for an Elixir of Life that could grant immortality. Little did they know that they would create gunpowder instead.

Alchemists were especially keen on experimenting with saltpeter, which they considered a key substance for unlocking the secrets of life – if only the experiments wouldn’t take such a flammable turn! A 9 th century alchemist named Ge Hong noted in his book Baopuzi (‘The Master Who Embraces Simplicity’) that a combination of saltpeter, sulfur, realgar and dried honey had a tendency to explode. The invention was soon employed in fireworks and the first artillery pieces.

OUT OF THE LAB AND INTO THE FRYING PAN

Some accidents are composed of equal parts win and fail. Take polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as Teflon.

The non-stick material was discovered in 1938 when DuPont Chemical worker Roy Plunkett, messing around with refrigerants and TFE gas, found a strange white powder on the inside of a canister he was working on. The substance was heat-resistant and almost completely frictionless. Little did Plunkett know, however, that his discovery would give untold numbers of people cancer due to the prescence of perfluorooctanoic acid in non-stick cookware.

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