Safety Measures For The Prevention Of Laboratory Accidents Among Secondary School Biology Students

This study was carried out on safety measures for the prevention of laboratory accidents among secondary school biology students Abeokuta. The study is was specifically set to  determine if the science laboratories in schools are safe enough for the users, determine if all equipment are up to the necessary standard with respect to safety and risk to health, determine if adequate arrangement are made for storage, maintenance, cleaning and renewal of the available equipment, determine effectiveness of the emergency procedures been formulated to cover for spillage of toxic or dangerous material, fire escape of gases etc. and find out if there is provision by regular inspection, examination and where necessary, testing to ensure that equipment and its safety devices have not deteriorated.

The survey design was adopted and the simple random sampling techniques were employed in this study. The population size comprise of biology students of some selected secondary schools in Abeokuta. In determining the sample size, the researcher conveniently selected 200 respondents and 150 were validated. Self-constructed and validated questionnaire was used for data collection. The collected and validated questionnaires were analyzed using frequency tables. While the hypotheses were tested using Chi-square statistical tool. The result of the findings reveals that the science laboratories in schools are not safe enough for the users. The study also revealed that there is provision by regular inspection, examination and where necessary, testing to ensure that equipment and its safety devices have not deteriorated.Therefore, it is recommended that the government should ensure more laboratories are constructed for each science subject to provide order in chemical arrangements and size adjusted in all school categories to accommodate the rising number of students. To mention but a few.