Related Reading: Concern
over students' mental
health
The Huang Yang
case has raised doubts over the
management of college laboratories, and
as a result, many colleges and
universities have ordered their laboratories
to carry out safety reviews. On
April 19, the school of pharmaceutical
sciences at Sun Yat-sen University in
Guangzhou, Guangdong province, issued new
rules on the management of toxic
chemicals. The regulations ban students
from working with toxic chemicals on
their own and require that experiments
are always conducted in the presence
of an observer.
An
investigation by Southern Metropolis Daily
claimed that on April 24, many
laboratories at the No 1 experimental
building at Guangdong Pharmaceutical
University's Zhongshan campus were
unoccupied, but the doors were
unlocked -in one, hundreds of bottles
of chemicals and measuring equipment
had been left unattended on
tables.
In the school's
No 2 experimental building, a postgraduate
student was conducting an experiment
alone in a lab on the third
floor. She told the newspaper that
postgraduate experiments are usually
undertaken without the involvement of
teachers.
One student left
electrical equipment running while they
went for lunch. A bottle of
chloroform had been left on a
table; its label warned that the
chemical is toxic, a stimulant and
has an anesthetic effect. The front
and back doors of the lab were
wide open, allowing easy access to
all comers.
