Why Do Safety Problems Persist in Academic Laboratories?

Abstract Despite widespread adoption of regulations, standard operating procedures, and formal safety training, safety incidents and unsafe practices continue to be reported in academic laboratories. This persistence raises important questions related to the effectiveness of existing safety approaches in higher-education contexts. This narrative review synthesizes the literature to examine why safety problems persist, focusing on the interactions among hazards, human behavior, training practices, and institutional governance. Rather than treating these factors in isolation, the analysis adopts a socio-technical perspective to explain how their interplay shapes everyday safety outcomes. The findings indicate that safety issues persist not because of the absence of rules but due to misalignments between governance structures and practice, normalization of risk-taking behavior, and limited integration of training into routine laboratory activities. In decentralized academic environments, competing priorities, uneven supervision, and variable organizational capacities further constrain the effectiveness of safety systems. The Review concludes that persistent safety problems reflect organizational and systemic deficiencies rather than individual compliance failures. This necessitates a crucial urgency in adopting integrated, learning-oriented safety strategies that embed safety within the educational process of academic laboratories.