Though you have to admit some industry-standard rules are overkill. Such as not being allowed to take the stairs, or if you are then you get a demerit if you don't keep a hand on the hand rail at all times. I had a friend trying to set up a set of fuel cell experiments at a large reseach company. It took him several months to get approval for using hydrogen in the lab. They kept pushing to get him to use 4% H2 in N2 since that is non-flammable, but utterly useless for the research he needed to do. Yet I'm sure there were people using concentrated HF in other labs that they approved.

In academia, you don't have that kind of safety approval process which would cause research to grind to a halt. I would posit that in most cases, the PI and postdocs and grad students are the people most qualified to assess the risks and dangers of the chemicals and equipment with which they are working. In industry there are, ostensibly, enough resources to support a safety team that can be experts on the hazards the company has to deal with. This is made easier by the company usually being involved in a limited number of types of hazardous activities. In academia, it would be a much larger challenge to maintain a safety team that is well trained in all of the activities going on around campus.

Another difference is that UCLA is not going to be sued into oblivion. Dow Corning was.

With that being said, the article was very alarmist. I forget what statistic they had, but it was something like 2 deaths in the last 50 years. Whoa! Better fix that right now!