Background and human factors of the accidents with chemicals in a university

Introduction
Accident with chemicals is one of the common accidents in the universities. Therefore we investigated the relationships between the type of the accident and the characteristics of victims or laboratories to find the potential risks and to determine the health and safety activities to consider and its priority.

Methods
The subjects were the accident reports from 2004 to 2010 in a university. The accidents were classified according to the types of accident, the background/human factors by text mining method, and the characteristics of victim/person concerned and laboratory. The types of accident and the background/human factors were compared according to the characteristics of the victim/person concerned or laboratory. The types and characteristics of accidents were different with the background factors.

Results
The typical difference was observed in the accident of students between the laboratory of chemistry and others. The major factors of accidents in the laboratory of chemistry were overconfident, ignore the rules, and misconception. Those in the laboratories of other courses were insufficient knowledge and inexperienced.

Discussion
This result suggests that the frequent and detailed health and safety advice might be needed for the students of chemistry and the education of chemicals and practical training might be needed for those of other course. Then occupational physicians and other health and safety staffs should support these activities through the periodical health and safety inspections and the health and safety education.