Towards the implementation of a safety education program in a teaching and research institution

Education is a continuing process for improving the level of knowledge including the pro-cess of learning and acquiring information. It is widely believed that constant exposure tonew ideas and skills makes people better workers, thinkers, and societal contributors. Thispaper presents and discusses some safety education strategies that were implemented toimprove the safety level in a research and teaching institution. They were applied to ourBasic Sciences School where chemical engineering is belonging. The aim was not to developa new curricula program but to concentrate on what should be done with all the peoplepresent in research and teaching labs/buildings. Using over 10 years of experience as occu-pational safety and health specialists we could observe that better results are achievedwhen the involvement of all actors (meaning all the persons present in the labs) is effective.Encompassing everyone implies educating them beforehand. We did not develop the safetyeducation included in the chemical engineering curricula but concentrate on the generalsafety education starting from the students performing their first practical labs, the hiringof new collaborators (whenever they are scientists, technicians or administrative staff) andthe continuing education of all personnel.© 2015 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.