On Electrical Safety in Academic Laboratories

Academic laboratories should be a safe environment in which one can teach, learn, and conduct research. Sharing a common principle, the prevention of potential accidents and imminent injuries is a fundamental goal in the laboratory environments. In addition, academic laboratories are attributed exceptional responsibility to instill in students the culture of the safety, the basis of risk assessment, and of the exemplification of the prudent practices around energized objects. Undergraduate laboratory assignments may normally be framed based upon the repetition of established experiments and procedures, whereas academic research laboratories may involve new methodologies and/or apparatus, for which the hazards may not be completely known to the faculty and student researchers. Yet, the academic laboratory should be an environment free of electrical hazards for both routine experiments and research endeavors, and faculty should offer practical inputs and safety-driven insights to academic administration to achieve such a paramount objective. In this article, the authors discuss the challenges to electrical safety in modern academic laboratories, where users may be exposed to harmful touch voltages.