Newly graduated PhD industrial hires typically lack essential laboratory safety skills, thus presenting safety risks to themselves, their co-workers, and to their new employers. Anecdotal estimates at Dow of how much time takes to allow PhD grads to do lab work by themselves, after demonstrating that they can do the tasks safely and know how to respond to upsets, ranges from less than one month to up to six months. This study was triggered by the organization of an American Chemical Society (ACS) Presidential Safety Summit in October 2022, to explore the chemical industry’s perspective on which laboratory safety skills PhD hires should have acquired during their education prior to employment. A diverse group across Dow of EH&S professionals and R&D managers prioritized skills from a curriculum of twenty-nine laboratory safety skills identified by an ACS taskforce. ● Of the four RAMP chemical hazards skill clusters (Recognize, Assess, Minimize, and Prepare for Emergencies), Dow experts ranked minimizing known risks, and being prepared for emergencies as the two top skill clusters that academia should focus on, for ensuring that their PhD graduates arrive prepared for safe laboratory work in industry. ● Top five specific laboratory safety skills academia should prioritize: 1. Recognize when to use personal protective equipment and appropriately select it (minimize risks). 2. Properly use a lab chemical hood, recognizing when the hood is malfunctioning (minimize risks). 3. Handle materials using best practices of laboratory safety (minimize risks). 4. Identify common physical and chemical laboratory hazards, such as corrosivity, pressure, vacuum, noise (recognize hazards). 5. Demonstrate the appropriate use of a safety shower and eye wash station in response to a chemical splash (preparing for emergencies). The significance of this work is to build on these findings by identifying and pursuing initiatives that can be implemented internally at Dow or collaboratively with the ACS and other stakeholders to better prepare new PhD hires for safe laboratory work.

Towards a faster and safer onboarding of PhD graduates for industrial laboratory work

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