I thought it would never happen to me

Abstract

“Don’t worry, that would never happen to me” was a common refrain I used with friends and family in the wake of Sheri Sangji’s death. Although the Sangji case rightfully sparked much-needed discussion and action on academic laboratory safety at the national level, in many cases we were (are) much slower to embrace change as individuals. This was certainly the case for me. When she died, I was a third-year graduate student. I’d been working with pyrophorics for several years. I was young and felt invincible. It was difficult to comprehend the potential severe consequences of a lab accident. As a result, Sangji’s death was for me not an instant paradigm shift but rather the start of a gradual awakening to the importance of laboratory safety. In my graduate lab at the California Institute of Technology, one of the most noticeable and important changes after Sangji’s death was that we,