The College agreed last week to pay $9,000 in penalties to the federal government for serious safety violations related to the June 8 death of Karen Wetterhahn, the chemistry professor poisoned by a toxic liquid in her Dartmouth laboratory.
The settlement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency of the Labor Department, states that the College failed to inform employees of the shortcomings of latex gloves, the kind worn by chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn when she was exposed to dimethylmercury in her laboratory in August 1996.
Dimethylmercury can penetrate latex gloves in 15 seconds or less.
When she began experiencing some symptoms of mercury poisoning -- slurred speech, difficulty with balance and loss of vision and hearing -- during the fall of 1996, Wetterhahn told investigators she remembered spilling a drop of the toxic chemical on her gloves while moving it to a different container in August. Wetterhahn was hospitalized in January, and she languished in a coma until her death in June.
The College will pay $4,500 each for two violations: allowing employees to use inadequate hand protection and failing to provide sufficient information about the limitations of different types of gloves.
The College violated OSHA regulations because its Chemical Hygiene Plan, required under federal law, "did not give adequate guidance on selection and use of appropriate gloves and in some sections the Plan promotes gloves that would not be suitable," according to the settlement.
The settlement awaits final approval by an OSHA review board. It does not constitute an admission of blame by the College.
College President James Freedman said Dartmouth will do "everything to ensure safety. We certainly are going to respond to the suggestions from OSHA."
Under the settlement, the College will share new data about glove permeability with OSHA, "flag" potentially hazardous chemicals, hire a chemical hygiene officer and create a committee on chemical safety.
All latex gloves in College laboratories now bear a brightly colored label warning that they are not suitable for handling hazardous chemicals. During the summer, the chemistry department hosted a workshop and hung posters to explain safe glove selection to employees.
OSHA originally planned a fine of $13,500, but reduced it by $4,500 when the College protested that two of the three violations were redundant.
An internationally known scientist who published more than 85 research papers, Wetterhahn was an expert on heavy metals and their effects on proteins and DNA in the body. She was the first female chemist ever to join the College faculty.
In 1995, she lead a team of Dartmouth scientists who won a $7 million grant from the federal government. The grant was the largest in the College's history.
As dean of graduate studies in 1990, associate dean of the faculty for the sciences from 1990 to 1994 and acting dean of the faculty of arts and sciences in 1995, Wetterhahn helped enhance both the undergraduate and graduate science programs at the College. She co-founded the Women in Science Project in 1990, which aims to increase the number of women taking courses in the sciences.
