Student-led Laboratory Safety Teams (LSTs) are a grass-roots effort to address academic safety culture, allowing for opportunities of empowerment, collaboration, and professional development. This community-based approach enables the potential for a Safe Sustainability Continuum where safety serves as a starting point toward the commitment to sustainability. As scientific research increasingly becomes more dynamic and interdisciplinary, it only emphasizes the need for the standard rule-based safety culture to be transformed into an empowering, risk-based safety culture. These risk-based evaluations and community efforts need to include green chemistry for a safer, sustainable, and eco-responsible approach.
This symposium will focus on strategies of researcher empowerment to engage in creating a safer, sustainable laboratory environment and general community-based efforts to improve safety and sustainability culture within academic settings. Discussion of specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) related to safety and sustainability are also encouraged to be addressed. Researchers, educators, industrial representatives, and EHS professionals interested in safety and sustainability approaches are invited to contribute to this symposium.