Rallying to the chemical safety cause

In September 2016, a practical using 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine made a return to the A-level curriculum – with unexpectedly dramatic consequences. Dried-out containers of the reagent were soon being unearthed in school chemical stores. Safe when damp, once dry this chemical has the potential to explode. By Christmas that year, the bomb squad had been called out to blow up containers at nearly 600 UK schools. This mammoth endeavour was coordinated by Cleapss, the UK’s science advisory education service. ‘It was a very exciting, but also quite a stressful, period of time,’ explains Matt Endean, the Cleapss deputy director. 

Two years later, safety in school laboratories was back in the news. It transpired that some ‘heatproof gauzes that had been sold to schools [for use with Bunsen burners] had asbestos in them’, Endean says. With no information available on how far back this issue went, ‘we had to oversee the bagging up and safe disposal of every gauze in every school in the country’. 

Endean is an ex-teacher, who graduated with a combined degree in chemistry and secondary education from the University of Exeter in 2001. He then took up a science teacher post at an inner London girls’ school. After a couple of years, he was promoted to acting head of department and found that he relished leadership. In 2005, he left the classroom – becoming a science advisor for a local authority. ‘It was a new challenge and a chance to influence and work at a higher level,’ he says. In this role, he supported science teachers and heads of department at 17 secondary schools.