Acid Burn at UCI Reveals Absence of Lab Showers : Safety device: University officials hasten to install safety equipment required by state after accident injures graduate student.

In the wake of a recent laboratory accident that left a graduate student seriously burned, UC Irvine officials are scrambling to install safety showers in the new Physical Sciences Building that were omitted in apparent violation of state standards.

A memo has been posted on bulletin boards in the new building indicating that safety showers will be installed. A chemistry department official confirmed Thursday that showers are being added to correct “substandard” conditions after the Sept. 23 accident which left graduate student Kate Sorensen with second- and first-degree burns on her legs from a spill of nitric acid.

Sorensen, who was recuperating at home in Irvine, said Thursday she did not follow certain safety procedures, such as wearing a protective acid-resistant apron when she was pouring nitric acid while cleaning lab glassware that Sunday afternoon. But when the bottle slipped from her gloved hand and broke, spilling nitric acid on her legs, her first instinct was to run for a safety shower, not to use a hand-held hose attached to a lab sink. Nitric acid is a corrosive chemical she was using as a cleaning agent.

Under state regulations, emergency showers are required in all work areas where as part of routine operations or possible emergencies, people can come in contact with substances that are corrosive, severely irritating to the skin or toxic by absorption, said Jim Brown, district manager of the state Occupational Health and Safety Administration office in Anaheim.

Brown, who said the regulation applies to all buildings in California except federally run facilities, said the state code further requires that an injured person be no more than 10 seconds from such showers.

The five-story Physical Sciences Building, which houses both physics and chemistry laboratories and opened in July, has four sinks per lab, each with a hand-held shower nozzle attached.

A UCI spokeswoman said Thursday that when the building was designed, Lawrence J. Lawson, the university’s director for construction and design services, was told that hand-held hoses attached to laboratory sinks were sufficient to meet state regulations.

“The design met the codes and it went through the required approval process,” spokeswoman Karen Young said Lawson told her. Lawson was unavailable for comment.

However, officials with the University of California’s Office of the President in Oakland indicated Thursday that state codes do require “deluge showers,” an overhead shower that can be activated by the push of a button or by pulling a handle, every 100 feet in laboratories.

An official with the University of California’s construction office said Thursday that UC specifications for laboratory facilities indicate that safety showers are required as part of the design.

“I have found in university specifications going back as early as 1972 the requirement for installation of safety showers . . . and in specs as late as 1990,” said Thomas A. Tribble, a senior engineer for facilities management and construction for UC.

UCI’s environmental health and safety officer was not on campus Thursday and was unavailable for comment.

Sorensen is part of an inorganic chemistry team studying how to make metallic polymers. She came to UCI this summer with chemistry professor Nancy Doherty from the University of Washington in Seattle.

“It (the acid) got my thighs and on down,” Sorensen said. “I was wearing a lab coat, but I should have been wearing an acid apron.

“I’m brand new to Irvine. I’d been taught that you pull the safety shower. I completely forgot that we had the pullout (sink nozzles). I thought ‘shower.’ ”

She ran next door. “There was somebody else in the next lab. They got water on me. But it would have been faster if I could have done it myself.”

She had been given safety training a week before the incident, which included use of the sink hose in case of emergencies, she said. But when the accident happened, “The only thing I could think of is ‘shower.’ ”

The acid caused first- and second-degree burns, the worst on her left thigh. The burned areas are still bandaged, but doctors have told her it appears she will not need skin grafts.