Most readers here will remember the fatal lab accident at UCLA in 2009 involving t-butyllithium, which took the life of graduate student Sheri Sangji. Well, there’s a new sequel to that: the professor involved, Patrick Harran, has been charged along with UCLA with a felony: “willfully violating occupational health and safety standards”. A warrant has been issued for his arrest; he plans to turn himself in when he returns from out of town this season. The University could face fines of up to $1.5 million per charge; Harran faces possible jail time.
This is the first time I’ve heard of such a case going to criminal prosecution, and I’m still not sure what I think about it. It’s true that the lab was found to have several safety violations in an inspection before the accident – but, on the other hand, many working labs do, depending on what sort of standards are being applied. But it would also appear that Sangji herself was not properly prepared for handing t-butyllithium, which (as all organic chemists should know) bursts into flames spontaneously on exposure to air. She was wearing flammable clothing and no lab coat; no one should be allowed to start working with t-BuLi under those conditions. Being inexperienced, she should have been warned much more thoroughly than she appears to have been.
So something most definitely went wrong here, and the LA County DA’s office has decided to treat it as a criminal matter. Well, negligence can rise to that level, under the law, so perhaps they have a point. Thoughts?
Update: here’s a post that rounds up the responses to this across the blogging world.
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The UCLA Lab Fatality: Criminal Charges Filed
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