September 10, 2019                              My Safety Story                            Maggie MacCormack

Thursday September 19^th, 2019:

Today is our first lab of the year and so am so excited! The past few weeks we’ve been learning about safety around the lab, what to do and how to act. Now the time has come to use all the skills we have learned and put them to work. For this lab my class is going to be mixing chemicals together to make some sort of substance. The first thing we need to do is put on our safety glasses so no chemicals can get into or around our eyes. Next we need to get our supplies out; we are going to be using test tubes for this experiment. My lab partner and I get out the test tubes and also the test tube rack. We also got out a few plastic beakers for the end product.

Once we had everything out and ready, we started to pour and mix the chemicals together. My partner was pouring one and I the other, just as we started to pour my partner spilled basically the whole test tube of chemicals onto the floor! The second it happened we quickly told our teacher and made sure everyone around knew that it was spilled. We went to the other side of the room with the rest of the class just to make sure we were not inhaling the chemicals, we waited there until our teacher gave us instructions of how to help clean it up.

Our teacher explained that the chemicals that we were working with were both flammable, poisonous and infectious materials which means that if they were exposed to heat or an open flame it would light up and become a fire. It also means that if we were to somehow get these chemicals into or around our mouth it would be very dangerous as they can cause diseases, bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites within our bodies. He also explained that there is another type of hazard symbol called HHPS (household hazardous product symbols). These are the little octagons, diamonds and upside-down triangles on some pf your household items.

An example of a HHPS is hairspray, it has the little fire on it. This means that if you spray hairspray onto or around any source of an open flame or heat it will also catch on fire itself. Another example is normal household cleaning products. Most to all contain the HHPS called corrosive. This means if large amounts are poured onto your skin or other materials it can either eat away at it or simply infect or irritate your skin or the other materiel.

After all of the chemicals were cleaned up, we went back to working on our experiments. About five minutes past and I got a paper cut on the sheet with our instructions, I decided not to tell the teacher or cover it up because it was not that big of a cut and we were almost done our experiment anyways. This was a very bad idea. When I was grabbing one of the test tubes to start cleaning up and I got chemicals into my open wound. During the next few days I had to go to the doctor, and she said it was an infection.

Back to the class, after everyone had finished cleaning up, we all sat back at our desks and wrote our conclusions. While we were doing so our teacher started to talk about what we are doing next week. He said it is a dissection, our teacher brings is explaining that we will be dissecting mice. This is something that I think some of the kids will have a problem with. Personally, I know that we are dissecting for scientific reasons only. I know that it might be difficult for some to think about hurting something that was once alive just to find out what it inside. I hope everyone can work through it because in the end it is an experience to learn things you could never know if you had not have done it.

The day is done, the class is cleaned up and everyone is ready to go home. Today science class was so much fun and I learned a lot. See you tomorrow!