ISABELLE HARWARD
Manager, Educational Laboratories
College of Science
Isabelle.Harward@utah.edu
TAWNY BESAW
Crocker Science Center Intern
College of Science
u1432399@utah.edu
safety
Crocker Science Center Intern
Getting miners home safe at night
Geoffrey King
“I’ve always had a wide range of interests,” he says. “It’s a blessing and a curse.”
At 43, King is not your typical graduate student. He’s worked in oil fields and mines, taught high school science, flipped houses, run a rental business, and even planned a year-long move to Spain. Now, he’s a student in the first-ever cohort of a master’s program at the University of Utah focused on mining safety. The interdisciplinary program is a collaboration between the U’s Department of Mining Engineering at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.
King’s path to mining safety was a circuitous one. After earning a geology degree from Weber State, he jumped into the industry, taking a job as a mine operations geologist with US Oil Sands. The company was trying to extract crude oil from Utah’s sandstone — an environmentally friendlier process than the Alberta tar sands operations — but like many before them, they struggled to make it profitable.
“They failed,” Geoffrey says matter-of-factly. “The price of oil wasn’t high enough, and the costs were too steep.”
Next came a six-month contract at the Kennecott Copper Mine, analyzing rock cores to predict slope stability — a crucial task in preventing catastrophic landslides. After that, a pivot: teaching high school earth sciences.
Then came Spain. Or at least, the idea of it. King and his wife had planned to move their family overseas for a year. She, ever the pragmatist, suggested he use the time to figure out what he wanted to do “when he grew up.” So, he did what everyone seems to do these days; he turned to ChatGPT.
King’s passion for connecting people to knowledge isn’t new. He credits his own education to his mother, who, despite severe
Geoffrey King and his children.
financial struggles and mental health challenges, made sure he had exposure to science. “We were poor,” he says, “but she always brought us to the Utah Museum of Natural History [NHMU] on free Mondays. That’s what set me on this path.”
This excursion into graduate school at the U is not his first rodeo — or perhaps more appropriately, not his first hard rock lesson. In addition to his youthful visits to the NHMU in what is now the Crocker Science Center, he "went to preschool right here on 2nd South. Kindergarten just down the road. Our neighbor had alligators in their backyard,” he adds with a laugh. “I’ve known where Presidents Circle is for a long time.”
As for what’s next, King — who when he’s not “digging” into his pastimes of coaching basketball, hiking and traveling — keeps his options and one more circuitous route open. “I might go into consulting, or mining safety or construction. Maybe I’ll start my own business.” He pauses, then grins. “That drives my wife nuts.”
Whatever he chooses, Geoffrey King knows one thing: he wants to make a real impact. “In this field, you can be the person making sure workers get home safe at night. That’s powerful.”
Danger is her business
Emily O'Hagan
Busy with processing waste pickups from University of Utah labs for disposal, shipping dangerous goods worldwide and inspecting lab spaces for proper chemical handling and storage, O’Hagan has seen it all. You will find the gloved and masked O’Hagan, who is employed by the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) department at the U, regularly suited up in fire-resistant long-sleeved khaki shirt and navy blue pants moving a wide variety of hazardous materials out of labs and other university facilities to a holding and sorting station before dispatching them to an off-campus facility for incineration. For O’Hagan dealing with dangerous materials is her business.
Mysterious campus corner
A typical day involves arriving at her office, checking email queries about how to dispose of materials as well as how to navigate the Safety Administrative Management System, software for waste submissions. Armed with an overview of the day’s requests, she checks in with the technicians who will do the pickups, what they should pay attention to and what they will be packing into the truck to transfer to the mysterious, hidden Building 590, “our own little corner of campus” near Red Butte Garden.
At the secured and armed 590, many kinds of hazardous wastes, including radioactive materials are stored.
Entering a clean room for an inspection in full PPE
The process of managing hazardous waste is more complicated than you might first imagine. “I can’t follow any regulations until I know what’s in the container,” she says, whether flammable solvents like ethanol, methanol or dichloromethane. “Bleach can’t be mixed with ammonia,” she reminds us of just one example of how volatile unintended chemical reactions can be. This process of “bulking” or consolidating similar materials into 55-gallon metal drums is a big part of her work before the U team contacts Clean Harbors or other third parties to ship out the waste to be incinerated or otherwise safely discarded.
“Once the techs are gone,” she says, "I go through the retaining section, checking dates on the materials that have been dropped off: which is hazardous and which are not, all within four days of their arrival.” In fact, hazardous waste management is highly regulated by local and federal agencies (Environmental Protection Agency — EPA , Occupational and Safety and Health Administration — OSHA, to name just two), and the paperwork and reporting is, naturally, voluminous. In her steel-toed boots, O’Hagan is adept at all of it, largely because of her background in chemistry.
Making research safe
A native of Sandy, O’Hagan’s first choice for a job growing up was to be an astronaut. Her second choice was something related to chemistry. “I always had an affinity for math and science,” she says, and her parents encouraged her to pursue STEM. “So it wasn’t exactly out of the blue — hey guys, guess what I’m going to do: hazardous waste!”
But following graduation with a BS in chemistry in 2022 and an internship working with other chemists to identify, segregate, and pack hazardous waste at Clean Harbors in Tooele, she saw her future, and that future was making science research at the U less dangerous for students and faculty as well as the public.
Emily O'Hagan and College of Science Safety Director working on cleaning out an old glove box. Credit: Jim Muller.
Besides flammable liquids that are bulked, O’Hagan deals with other categories of hazardous waste, including cylinders of flammable and non-flammable gases and flammable solids like metal dust or naphthalene (mothballs). Other discarded materials can become dangerous when wet or spontaneously combustible. Finally, there is a miscellaneous category like used gloves and weigh boats. Most of these items get incinerated. If non-regulated they go to a landfill. Other items like acidic solutions can be neutralized then solidified and landfilled in a secure place.
Since O’Hagan and her team at EHS are into transporting waste, she has to be up to date not only with the EPA and OSHA but with the Department of Transportation and the International Air Transport Associate which regulates shipping and the workers involved with shipping from point-to-point via ground or air. Though too young, perhaps, to have hefted them at home when a youth, O’Hagan refers to the highly detailed manuals she keeps at her desk as “phonebook-sized.”
Label, label, label
Keeping us all safe at the U and beyond, O’Hagan is at-the-ready when asked how we can all help with the safe disposal and transportation of hazardous wastes: “The biggest ‘PSA’ I have is to graduate students to tell us what’s in those containers, in those vials and flasks. Some graduate students [and retiring faculty when they exit their labs] will leave a note for us to ‘check notebook’ and we don’t have that notebook.”
That uncertainty is not the kind of variety, or “spice” that makes Emily O’Hagan’s job gratifying. So, the message is clear: safety first and always whether you’re required at work to wear those steel-toed boots and full-face respirators or not.
Making it home safely every day
The almost feral high-desert and mountain terrain profoundly shapes everyone who lives here. But it takes a special sensitivity to realize just how fragile that environment is. Torres has that sensitivity and earned not one but two associate degrees in the environmental sciences from Salt Lake Community College.
But career tracks have a life of their own, it would seem, and during a five-year stint beginning as an intern with an environmental health and safety consulting firm, Torres was tasked with an interesting and, it turned out, a transformational project related to the demolition of a smelter.
For many years in Salt Lake Valley the iconic Murray smokestacks stood like silent sentinels to the past when the duo — one of which was 450-feet tall above the former smelter — attempted back in the first half of the 20th century to lift smoke filled with lead and arsenic away from the population below.
For Torres it was the spectacular demolition and clean-up of these mid-valley landmarks that marked her foray from her training and her ambition to “try to save the world,” as she says, to the more formalized sector of environmental health and safety (EHS).
“While I was there [at the consulting firm], I got a lot of cross-training in the health and safety side of things,” she recalls. At the old Murray smelter site, her job was to do the environmental monitoring of the project, determining dust levels and making sure there wasn't cross contamination into other areas. “I got into the safety or the IH [industrial health] side of things because I started conducting exposure assessments on employees rather than the environment.”
It wasn’t just the training Torres got as the stacks came down; it was an ethic of occupational safety for individuals, an ethic that continues to this day.
This formative experience led Torres not only to a bachelor’s degree but to work in 2004 as a compliance officer at the state-level Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Under the OSHA law created by the U.S. Congress, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their workers. “I was so excited to go into the regulatory side of things,” she says, “because as a consultant we're always trying to help the employer comply with the regulations.”
Torres later advanced at OSHA to the position of an industrial hygienist, involved in identifying, evaluating and controlling hazards that can affect the health of workers, including chemical, physical, ergonomic, or biological exposures. Then, in 2004, she decided to try her luck at the federal level and found herself a consumer safety officer at the Food and Drug Administration.
Christin Torres
“I never imagined that I would work in safety,” says Torres. “I didn't know that safety and the environmental sciences went together, but they absolutely do. If you had asked me 'what are you going to be when you grow up?' it wouldn't have been a compliance officer or an occupational safety specialist.”
Except for a stint as a massage therapist for a few years prior to the pandemic, Torres has stayed in the field of health and safety where she discovered what she likes about it: researching federal and state regulations. In February she joined the Environmental Health and Safety department at the University of Utah as a compliance specialist. “I absolutely love doing research on regulations and interpretations and how they apply to this situation and how I can hold my employer accountable and to ask for corrective actions,” she says.
While Torres found what she liked about the work of EHS, she never lost track of the “why” in her career — the real motivation to learn, for example, the ins-and-outs of laboratory safety which is a new aspect of her work in compliance at a research university. Whether saving a personified Mother Earth as an idealistic youth, protecting Salt Lake Valley residents from the demolition of a toxic smelter, or, later, facilitating healing through massage, her work, currently in compliance, has been designed to help and protect others.
“This sounds grandiose,” she says, “but I really am helping people make it home every day … I'm helping employers or students who are employees become aware of their surroundings, teaching them how to do things safer so that they can go home to their family everyday with all of their fingers and [both] … their arms, being able to breathe normally because they didn't breathe in something accidentally and ruin their lungs… . If you're changing the way an employer does their business to make it a safer place to work the potential to save a life is high, in my opinion.”
Just talking with Christin Torres with her easy laugh and penchant for regulatory detail will make you feel safer.
Safety Awards
2025 Quarterly Excellence in Safety Awardees
The Quarterly Excellence in Safety Award was created to highlight the efforts of those members of our College of Science community who go the extra mile to prioritize safety in the workplace. The individuals receiving these quarterly awards are someone who exemplifies a culture of safety, not through perfection or the absence of mistakes, but rather through the recognition of areas for growth and the determination and drive to continually improve the safety of their work environment and of those around them. The first quarter winner of the 2025 Quarterly Safety Excellence Award is Chelsea Valiton, a graduate student representative on the Chemistry Safety Committee. Her department chair, Andrew Roberts, noted that Chelsea is especially skilled in the social aspects of science and that she represents the best of responsible students who practice chemistry safely. Her positive and welcoming role on the Chemistry Safety Committee makes approaching the committee easy for undergraduate and graduate students. Congratulations Chelsea! Photo credit: Anita Tromp
To see the previous Quarterly Excellence in Safety Awardees, click here.
2024 Excellence in Safety Awardee: Wil Mace
Wil Mace, the research manager in the Department of Geology & Geophysics is involved in almost every facet of safety in our College, from helping various groups with lab inspections, to maintaining a fleet of field vehicles and ensuring they have the appropriate emergency supplies always stocked, to providing feedback and guidance on a new Field Safety module, to currently serving as the Chair of the Joint Safety Committee for the Mining Engineering, Geology and Geophysics and Atmospheric Science Departments. "There really isn’t anywhere that Wil can’t be found positively influencing the safety of his colleagues. Thank you Wil for all that you have done and continue to do!" said David Thomas, Director of Safety in the College of Science. Photo credit: Todd Anderson
EHS Partnership Award
The EHS Partnership Award recognizes faculty and staff members who exemplify an outstanding commitment to safety as a core value and routinely partner with EHS in nurturing a culture of safety at the University of Utah. The award consists of a framed certificate plus a $500 “safety grant” sent to a chartfield of the recipients choosing.
2024 EHS Partnership Awardees: Jim Muller and Mike Scarpulla
The 2024 EHS Partnership Awardees are Jim Muller, Executive Director of Facilities Management for the College of Science and Mike Scarpulla, Professor, Materials Science & Engineering. Photo credit: Todd Anderson
A Catalyst for Safety
In June 2019, a chemical spill in a Department of Chemistry laboratory led to a full department shutdown until a comprehensive safety assessment could be completed. Within days, most laboratories re-opened. Within weeks, the department had put into motion an unprecedented safety makeover in partnership with the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) and the College of Science. Since then, the college and EHS have enacted creative solutions to rebuild a culture of lab safety from the ground up—and it has paid dividends in implementing safeguards related to COVID-19.
Tommy Primo
“Everyone from the department level up to the President’s Office has made significant changes to how the U regulates laboratory safety,” said Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science. “By the time COVID-19 hit, we had the right infrastructure, the right coordination between EHS and our own folks, so that we could quickly lead out in the COVID era.”
Committed committees
Matthew Sigman
At the time of the spill, the U’s laboratory safety culture had been through a series of internal and external audits, including one by the Utah State Legislature. The reports identified crucial gaps in safety and made recommendations for improvement. The U has made significant progress addressing these recommendations, including establishing and expanding the number and authority of college and departmental-level safety committees. Within the College of Science, the Departments of Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics & Astronomy and the School of Biological Sciences all have committees made up of staff and faculty who performed routine lab inspections and reported violations. The previous safety system’s structure allowed some violations to remain unresolved. Now, the committees are empowered to recommend how violations get addressed. They’ve also expanded their scope to include postdocs and graduate students who can make suggestions for outdated practices or areas that need attention. In the coming weeks, safety committees will be required in all University colleges.
“To change the safety culture, there has to be the motivation, and it has to be a grassroots effort,” said Matthew Sigman, Peter J. Christine S. Stang Presidential Endowed Chair of Chemistry. “This is a success because it’s collaborative, it’s conversational, and it’s pragmatic. It’s about building relationships and getting buy-in from the top down.”
Sarah Morris-Benavides
In January, EHS and the College of Science jointly hired Sarah Morris-Benavides as the first associate director of safety for the College. Morris-Benavides facilitates communication between researchers, and helps translate regulatory protocols between the college and EHS. She also heads the College of Science’s safety committee that is made up of the department committee chairs. She and the committees have worked closely to ensure that classes and research are conducted safely in light of the coronavirus restrictions.
“I can’t tell you how valuable they’ve been,” said Morris-Benavides of the response to COVID-19. “We had a great benefit that these committees were already established and in place.”
Every month, the college safety committee meets to discuss each department’s safety protocols. “We have the ability to say, ‘Well, here’s something that they’re doing in biology. Does that make sense for physics?” she said. “Chemistry learned a lot from their amazing safety turnaround, and they’ve shared their best practices. It all benefits every department.”
Precipitating solutions
Selma Kadic
The U overhauled the previous laboratory safety system by restructuring EHS directly under the Vice President for Research Office, and Frederick Monette became its new director. This helped rebuild trust between the EHS and researchers, who had historically been at odds.
“Fred Monette was all in right away. His willingness to sit down with people, listen to their concerns, and back it up financially meant a lot to the people in the department,” said Holly Sebahar, professor of chemistry who was the chair of the chemistry safety committee at the time of the shutdown.
Safety violations can be complicated; some are easy fixes, such as ensuring lab members wear proper PPE, but other issues are expensive, such as electrical or ventilation upgrades within older buildings. Traditionally, the burden of arranging infrastructure upgrades and their cost often fell solely on the principal investigator (PI) of the laboratory in question.
Angus Wu
To change that, EHS and the College of Science lobbied for an infrastructure improvement project to fund overdue, expensive safety upgrades in College of Science buildings, many of which were identified as deficiencies during the chemistry shutdown. The resulting $1 million capital improvement project will address electrical upgrades, seismic bracing, and ventilation improvements in several buildings, beginning in January 2021. Addressing these deficiencies in one comprehensive project will be much quicker, more economical, and result in less disruption to laboratory operations compared with the past approach of fixing each issues one by one at the request of individual laboratories.
Working with the College of Science, the VPR Office facilitated the purchase of 20 new refrigerator/freezers rated for storage of flammable chemicals to replace units that failed to meet regulatory requirements, sharing the cost 50/50 with the PIs. These initiatives demonstrated the administration’s commitment to promoting a culture of safety across the university.
From the ground up
As another example of a changed safety culture, the Department of Chemistry aims to incorporate safety in all aspects of academic life. Every speaker, seminar and many group meetings now incorporate a ‘safety moment,’ with each presenter asked to share an example of a safety incident and how they addressed it.
Shelley Minteer
“We have upwards of 30 or 40 external visitors a year. That’s a lot of safety moments. They’ll walk through that experience, then walk through the lab procedures to fix the problem,” Sigman said. “It’s a lessons learned, but also it’s an open conversation. We want to have the lowest risk, but we know when you sign up to be a chemist, you have the danger. Even when you cross the t’s, dot the i’s, something can happen.”
The collaborations go beyond the science—last year, EHS, the College of Science and the College of Mines and Earth Sciences co-hosted a two-day lab safety symposium with speakers and training sessions that addressed all types of issues, from chemical storage to creating effective safety committees. More than 400 staff, students and faculty attended the mandatory event to emphasize that every individual is responsible to making their environment safe. The U is applying that same philosophy for COVID-19.
“As we started going through the safety culture changes, we realized that it’s not that students or post docs or faculty won’t follow safety protocols, they will, if they know where they are, if they can find the paperwork,” said Shelley Minteer, associate chair for faculty for the Department of Chemistry and COVID-19 coordinator for the department. “We learned a lot from the safety ramp up. We need clear guidelines and good communication. We’ve been applying those same principles to COVID.”