Who works to keep our school safe? Who directs the fire drill in our dormitory? The answer is faculties in the department of General Affairs & Safety Management, which is under the Office of Business Affairs. Since the Sewol Ferry disaster occurred last year, there has been increasing emphasis and interest on the importance of safety management, accident prevention, and emergency drills. Therefore, The Postech Times interviewed Young Soo Kim, who is the director of General Affairs & Safety Management. According to him, General Affairs & Safety Management has been trying to boost all the works to keep Postechians safe. They maintain the safety in various fields including lab safety, fire drills, and radiation safety. However, they decided to focus more on lab safety this year. It is because starting from Jan. 1, the government reinforced Laboratory Safety Act to be upgraded. Also, there have been a few accidents in our school laboratory and the increase in integrative research may offer risk factors to lab safety.
Two fatal accidents occurred last year. One was a laser accident. The same accident happened on Feb. 20, 2014 and Apr. 17, 2014. Both occurred in Room 409 in Science Building V. The experimenters got burned in the eyes by not wearing safety glasses. The cause was disobeying safety regulations. The main problem was that two identical accidents occurred at the same place. The second one was a fire that occurred on Dec. 19, 2014. It happened in Room 206 of Science Building V. The fire was originated from heating solvent in a small hood. The experimenters left the room during the experiment, so the cause was also attributed to disobeying safety regulations in the lab. A similar accident happened on Apr. 28, 2014.
To improve lab safety, General Affairs & Safety Management analyzed the type and cause of lab accidents from Jan. 1 to Dec. 30, 2014. Among 19 accidents, 8 of them were classified as chemical accidents, 5 of them were fire accidents, and the rest included gas, laser, and leakage accidents. Furthermore, eight of them were due to the violation of safety regulations, five of them due to carelessness in treating chemicals, and the rest due to lack of attention in experiments or improperly treated gas. Only one accident occurred because of a flaw in lab facilities. They directed attention to the fact that 18 out of 19 accidents arose from personal mistakes: eight of them resulted from the misunderstanding and violation of safety regulations and 10 of them from lack of attention during experiment. Additionally, similar types of accidents overlapped and people tended to downplay the significance of reporting small accidents. Moreover, some people refuse to participate in the education of safety laws or QSS activities, which is critical in keeping the lab safe. Thus, General Affairs & Safety Management concluded they mainly need to increase the safety consciousness of students in the laboratory. Starting from this year, they upgraded trainings about safety regulations. Practical and personal education is now available for experimenters and there will be more fire drills and trainings about radiation safety regulations.