Two Researchers Injured in Chemical Explosion at Lab on USC Campus

A chemical explosion Wednesday in a lab at the USC School of Medicine left two researchers burned, one critically, authorities and school officials said.

The injured men were not identified by name, but were described as a 30-year-old man, who was burned over 60% to 80% of his body and who was in critical condition at USC Medical Center, and a 22-year-old man, possibly a student researcher, who was burned over 30% of his body and is in serious condition at Torrance Memorial Hospital.

After the blast, which occurred shortly after 2 p.m., both men were transported by USC personnel from the fourth-floor lab of the school’s John Stauffer Pharmaceutical Sciences Center on Zonal Avenue in Lincoln Heights to the medical center across the street, said USC spokesman Richard Cox.

A Los Angeles city fire official said the chemicals involved in the explosion may have been alcohol and ether, but that no exact determination had been made.

There was no fire, but fire officials were on hand to investigate the blast. Damage to the lab apparently was limited to the research station where the explosion occurred. The two men were alone in the lab, Cox said.

Alcohol and ether “were present in the lab,” he said, “but to what extent they were involved in the explosion we do not know.”

The occupants of the seven-story Pharmaceutical Sciences Center on the USC Health Sciences Campus were evacuated as a precaution after the blast, he said.

The lab where the explosion occurred, Cox said, is used primarily for “free radical research” or basic research into how various medications affect human cells and tissue.

Cox did not know specifically what project or experiment the two injured men were working on.

Fire officials said the explosion caused $2,000 in property damage to the lab’s contents, but no structural damage