Universities told to improve management of hazardous chemicals

Chinese universities have been urged to improve the control and management of hazardous chemicals in their labarotories to prevent safety risks and cases of misuse.

The Ministry of Education on Thursday posted a circular on its website, requiring universities and colleges to improve their regulation of the storing, use and disposal of hazardous chemicals they keep for experiments.

The entire process regarding chemicals should be put under control, and all areas, including purchasing, obtaining, use, returning and disposal, should be properly recorded, the circular said.

Colleges should make sure that registrations of consumption and inventory of chemicals are accurate and tally with each other, the document said.

Toxic chemicals should be double-locked and major processes, such as storing, obtaining and using must be conducted by at least two people, it said.

Moreover, different hazardous materials must be kept separately, and inflammable and explosive materials in laboratories, including labs that are not in use, should be properly handled, the circular said.

The document also urged local governments and authorities to make sure regulations are properly carried out.

The circular was issued after a campus poisoning case last month, where a postgraduate student in Shanghai was poisoned to death.

The suspect, a medical student from China's renowned Fudan University, allegedly took some N-Nitrosodimethylamine, a highly toxic chemical compound, from the university laboratory and put it into the drinking water machine in the dormitory, leading to the poisoning of his roommate.

Also in April, an explosion at a university in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, killed one person and injured three others.

The blast in a disused laboratory at the university was allegedly caused by some workers attempting to steal lab materials.