A University of Windsor professor has dismissed criticism after supervising the transportation of liquid nitrogen by three students outside near the university.
The students, along with Andrzej Sobiesiak, head of the mechanical engineering department at the university, were videotaped using a cart to transport a 200-litre tank of liquid nitrogen down the street. The Ontario Ministry of Labour said it is investigating the incident.
The video was posted on YouTube by CUPE Local 1393 president Aldo DiCarlo with the caption “when we walk out the door, safety flies out the window.”
CUPE Local 1393, which represents technical, professional and skilled trades workers at the University of Windsor is currently on strike.
Candy Donaldson, the hazardous materials technician at the University of Windsor and CUPE secretary, said the manual transportation of liquid nitrogen is a major breach of the university’s safety policy and that the safety director was wrong to approve it.
Sobiesiak said CUPE was turning the story into a much bigger issue than it needed to be, but declined to comment further.
But Jeffrey Manthorpe, a science professor at Carleton University, said the video did not show any wrongdoing by the students.
He said in the video, one person can be seen moving the cart and another is positioned in a manner to maintain its balance.
Neither are moving at an excessive speed, he said.
“I’m not sure what was done in the video really runs afoul of the transportation rules and regulations [for liquid nitrogen],” Manthorpe said. “I don’t have a huge amount of concern.”
He said if this was not the usual way of transporting tanks of liquid nitrogen, then the situation must have been serious.
“Out of desperation you have to go get liquid nitrogen and it can’t wait,” Manthorpe said, “I would have transported it in a similar way.”
Manthorpe said transporting the cart outdoors lowered the risks that are involved with liquid nitrogen, which can include asphyxiation and freezing of the body. He said that even though the students were not professionals, there are guidelines as to who is allowed to handle chemicals in a lab.
“All of the students who work in labs: graduate students, post- doctorate, research associates, undergraduates, whether or not they are working in a research lab or taking courses with a lab component, they have to do Workplace Hazardous Materials Information Systems (WHMIS) training every year,” he said.
But Donaldson said that while WHMIS is designed to train students with handling hazardous materials, it does not prepare them for responding to a spill.
She said the tanks that were carted across the street in the video were 200-litre tanks and have a much higher potential for danger than the 20-litre tanks used in labs.
“We would never transport a hazardous material on the road the way that it was,” she said.
Tim Mlinaric, a third-year student at the University of Windsor, said via email that the idea of students pulling a cart makes for a striking image, but the safety risks are not nearly as high as they seem.
“You see people at Canadian Tire filling up propane tanks and [people] don’t say anything,” he said.
