Developing an Approach to Enhance School Laboratory Safety in Malaysia

Laboratory safety in schools should be emphasized as existing education system encourages students to conduct sciencetific experiments in school laboratories. The Ministry of Education (MOE) has published guidelines on the Management and Safety of School Laboratory (PKMSS) and incorporated elements on laboratory safety into science textbook and practical. Nonetheless, these documents did not offer a comprehensive approach that can be easily memorised by the students. Hencce by analysing relevant documents, this study offers an systematic approach that empompases important components of laboratory safety, in order to make it more comprehensive and easily memorised by the students. Basis to develop the appraoch is based on the 3R approach (reduce, reuse and recycle). The laboratory safety approach developed in this study is known as 5P (Procedures, Safety Equipment, Handling Experiment, Chemical Waste Management and Emergency Response Plan). Perhaps the 5P approach can be adopted by stakeholders in the future and then enhance school laboratory safety in Malaysia.