It’s almost ridiculous to refer to it as a “rainbow demonstration.” The name sounds bright, innocuous, and upbeat, like something from a kindergarten art class. However, it takes a completely different turn when a chemistry teacher uses open containers of methanol. Something that culminates in students being airlifted to hospitals and a school district apologizing while frantically drafting new regulations that it ought to have had long ago.
During one of these “rainbow demonstrations,” which involve burning various metal salts to demonstrate to students how flames change color, a fire started on October 30 at a high school in Fairfax County, Virginia. The fire was started by a flashback to the bulk methanol container and quickly spread. The teacher and five pupils were burned. Two of those pupils required airlift because they were in such poor condition. The school had to be evacuated and suffered $7,500 in damages. It was the kind of scene that seems unreal when you imagine a calm science class on a Tuesday morning.
But it’s not the accident itself that’s more difficult to accept. Accidents do occur. The fact that the US Chemical Safety Board had already published a safety bulletin about nearly identical incidents just months prior, in 2014, after three similar accidents injured adults and children over the course of eight weeks, makes it painful to realize that this was not an isolated incident. There were warnings. They were written down. Nevertheless, a teacher in Fairfax County poured methanol from a bulk container in front of a class of pupils.
Perhaps the instructor was unaware of the speed at which methanol can flash back. Many people, including educators, are still genuinely ignorant of the dangers that methanol and other flammable liquids pose in open, enclosed classroom settings, according to the CSB. Around the time of the 2014 bulletin, CSB member Kristen Kulinowski wrote, “These demonstrations can be exciting and encourage students’ interest in chemistry when performed safely.”
The phrase “when performed safely” is the crux of the issue. When a teacher is dealing with thirty agitated teenagers at nine in the morning, there is a difference between what that appears to be on paper and what actually occurs. The American Chemical Society had previously urged schools to completely cease using methanol in rainbow demonstrations on open benches. not to change them. not to include a safety cone. to cease. Apparently, not everyone who needed to hear the call received it.
Karen Garza, the superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools, initiated a review of the science curriculum and banned open-flame activities in science classrooms following the incident. By the end of the semester, science instructors had to submit safety updates. These are not irrational answers, but they pose a challenging question: why does a curriculum review need to be triggered by a child who has been burned? If not this, what is reviewed every year?
A young woman who was burned over 40% of her body during a nearly identical demonstration back in 2006 is shown in a CSB safety video. Her injury and this one happened almost twenty years apart. Many classrooms continued to light methanol on fire in front of teenagers during that time, seemingly thinking it would be okay. Until it isn’t, it usually is.
It is particularly frustrating to watch this type of institutional response develop. Memoranda are written. The reviews are released. A statement is released by the superintendent. Additionally, it’s possible that other schools are currently conducting comparable protests under comparable circumstances because they haven’t received the memo yet or because it arrived in an inbox unread.
