A medicinal chemist by training I have considerable experience working in a commercial lab for a (now) large CRO based in Nottingham. At the time the company was small and i doubled up as a safety officer. This gave me a real on the ground training in chemical safety.

After a few years doing this dual role i decided to jump into full time safety and moved to University of Surrey, working in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. This exposed me to a wide range of hazards outside of “normal chemistry lab” ones.

Since this role i have always worked in academic settings (University of Reading, Institute of Cancer Research) and am now Faculty Safety Advisor at Imperial in the Faculty of Medicine. Although predominantly life science based, this role is very wide and varied and one in which chemical safety is very often overlooked or underestimated.