Safety culture and safety compliance in academic laboratories: A Canadian perspective

Laboratories are inherently dangerous work environments. In fact, there have been a number of incidents, including fatalities, reported from academic laboratories situated in the United States and worldwide. In many instances, a lack of safety compliance and poor safety culture have been attributed to causing these laboratory accidents. Oddly, no major incident has apparently been reported from an academic lab based in Canada. Therefore, the goal of this pilot study was to examine the safety culture and level of safety compliance that exists within a medium-sized Canadian university. This was conducted by administering an online survey to participants in which a number of the questions were adapted from a 2012 international safety culture study. The results indicated a potential gap between how safety is perceived and managed at the participating institution. For instance, while 90% of the participants indicated that safety is important to them, 9% revealed they lacked safety training, 27% said they do not conduct any form of risk assessment before lab work, and only 40% said they always wear their personal protective equipment when performing lab work. In addition, although 88% indicated that safety is a high priority in their lab, 39% felt that the safety in their lab could be improved. These results suggest that the labs at this Canadian institution not only has issues with safety compliance but also lacks a strong and positive safety culture. Overall, these findings lend further evidence that poor safety compliance and safety culture in university labs is a global phenomenon and warrants urgent attention.