Innovation isn't always the safest field. Here's what to consider within incident reporting. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Exploding refrigerator? Chemical splash on the face? These are not just personally devastating lab incidents, they are also expensive.

For instance, awhile back, the University of Hawaii faced a total $115,500 fine for 15 workplace safety violations after a laboratory explosion where a postdoctoral researcher lost one of her arms. Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote in Science that the accident “resulted from a static electricity charge that ignited a tank containing a highly flammable, pressurized mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide.”

Referred to as “incidents,” they are defined by University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in this way: “An incident is an event that results in or causes injury or damage to someone or something, or an event that has the potential to result in or cause injury or damage.”

But when asked which incidents are reportable, the answer is uniform across all research universities: all incidents must be reported.

Incidentally...

There are websites dedicated to laboratory accidents, like this one at UCSB. It lists the two accidents mentioned in this blog’s first sentence. University of Michigan Environment, Health and Safety’s website said, “Being safe at the University of Michigan requires a positive safety culture where we learn from mistakes and near-misses in order to improve and prevent future occurrences. It is vital that you report all ‘incidents’ including near- misses, injuries resulting from your activities, non-compliance with safety and environmental rules, and general unsafe work conditions so that we can learn and grow.” Northwestern University’s website on Research Health and Safety said, “Always report ‘near-misses’ just as you would an incident that causes injury or harm to property.”

Near-missing

You may be asking, what constitutes a “near-miss”? At Western Kentucky University, for example: “A laboratory “near-miss” is an unplanned situation, where with minor changes to time or setting, could have easily resulted in damage or injury to person or property. A near-miss is characterized as having little, if any, immediate impact on individuals, processes, or the environment, but provides insight into accidents that could happen.” Laboratory near misses may cause chemical spills, explosions and bodily injury, but can be treated with first-aid.

Form finding

Most universities have a form to fill out if there is an incident that could have led to a severe injury or death. The form asks for a description of the incident and even asks, in some instances, “Why did it happen?” These should be made out comprehensively and quickly.

OSHA

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a reporting process, aside from what each university requires. They need information when you call. The OSHA website states: “Be prepared to supply: Business name; names of employees affected; location and time of the incident, brief description of the incident; contact person and phone number.”

There are even time limits for how quickly one must report a severe injury that requires an in-patient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye (24) or fatality.

(It’s eight hours.)

The fact that “losing an eye” is one of just four reasons to contact OSHA, you may wonder, “Are a lot of people blinded in the lab, often?” Also, “Where can I buy safety goggles?”

“Are a lot of people blinded in the lab, often? Also, where can I buy safety goggles?”

The big idea

There are many websites which detail lab disasters. Some are cautionary tales, some are avoidable situations. Just be sure to wear your Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and be safe out there. Or rather, in there.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

Here's some advice for going green in the lab. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Houston expert shares tips for shrinking your lab's carbon footprint

houston voices

Trying to make your lab greener? Here are some practical examples of how to reduce your lab's carbon footprint and increase sustainability. Since China stopped accepting certain types of plastic waste from the United States and Europe in 2017, the need to dispose of hundreds of single-use plastic vials and other materials (per researcher, each year!) has created an avalanche of waste.

The "single use" problem

COVID-19 has led to even more single-use plastics in labs – and in our everyday lives. The sheer number of gloves, testing kits and even masks we throw away is incredible. "The majority of masks are manufactured from long-lasting plastic materials, and if discarded can persist in the environment for decades to hundreds of years," wrote authors from the University of Portsmouth at the Conversation.com.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Labs are full of other single-use plastics such as pipette tips, weighing boats, tubes, flasks, reagent bottles, cuvettes, and more. 'Reduce, reuse and recycle' is a fine mantra, but how do researchers cut down on plastics when the sterility of equipment is a concern?

According to the UK's Chemical and Engineering News magazine, "Different users have optimized washing protocols to get pipette tips clean enough for different lab techniques, including mass spectrometry or toxicology and immunology assays.

Earlier this year, for example, researchers at the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences found their washed pipettes gave the same results as new tips for preparing small-interfering-RNA screening libraries." Customers of Grenova, a lab equipment firm, have reported that some tips can reused 25-40 times.

Baby it's cold

In Nature, Jyoti Madhusoodanan wrote: "Scientists are increasingly aware of the disproportionate environmental footprint of their research. Academic research facilities consume three to six times as much energy as commercial buildings, much of that due to refrigeration and ventilation systems." The has led some third-party "green companies" employed by labs to hold entire conferences around ultra-low temperature freezers. In a feature advertisement in Nature Portfolio, a statistic read: "An average Ultra-Low Temperature freezer consumes as much energy as a single-family home (~20 kWh/day)."

Help for scientists

There are non-profits that will help you mitigate the amount of waste produced by your lab. One of these, My Green Lab, said on its website: "Run 'for scientists, by scientists,' we leverage our credibility and track record to develop standards, oversee their implementation, and inspire the many behavioral changes that are needed throughout the scientific community."

And it offers a free training course for "ambassadors" – those who would like to guide their lab toward sustainable practices.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

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Houston company ranks No. 13 worldwide on Forbes Global 2000 list

World's Biggest Companies

More than 60 Texas-based companies appear on Forbes’ 2025 list of the world’s 2,000 biggest publicly traded companies, and nearly half come from Houston.

Among Texas companies whose stock is publicly traded, Spring-based ExxonMobil is the highest ranked at No. 13 globally.

Rounding out Texas’ top five are Houston-based Chevron (No. 30), Dallas-based AT&T (No. 35), Austin-based Oracle (No. 66), and Austin-based Tesla (No. 69).

Ranking first in the world is New York City-based J.P. Morgan Chase.

Forbes compiled this year’s Global 2000 list using data from FactSet Research to analyze the biggest public companies based on four metrics: sales, profit, assets, and market value.

“The annual Forbes Global 2000 list features the companies shaping today’s global markets and moving them worldwide,” said Hank Tucker, a staff writer at Forbes. “This year’s list showcases how despite a complex geopolitical landscape, globalization has continued to fuel decades of economic growth, with the world’s largest companies more than tripling in size across multiple measures in the past 20 years.”

The U.S. topped the list with 612 companies, followed by China with 317 and Japan with 180.

Here are the rest of the Texas-based companies in the Forbes 2000, grouped by the location of their headquarters and followed by their global ranking.

Houston area

  • ConocoPhillips (No. 105)
  • Phillips 66 (No. 276)
  • SLB (No. 296)
  • EOG Resources (No. 297)
  • Occidental Petroleum (No. 302)
  • Waste Management (No. 351)
  • Kinder Morgan (No. 370)
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise (No. 379)
  • Baker Hughes (No. 403)
  • Cheniere Energy (No. 415)
  • Corebridge Financial (No. 424)
  • Sysco (No. 448)
  • Halliburton (No. 641)
  • Targa Resources (No. 651)
  • NRG Energy (No. 667)
  • Quanta Services (No. 722)
  • CenterPoint Energy (No. 783)
  • Coterra Energy (No. 1,138)
  • Crown Castle International (No. 1,146)
  • Westlake Corp. (No. 1,199)
  • APA Corp. (No. 1,467)
  • Comfort Systems USA (No. 1,629)
  • Group 1 Automotive (No. 1,653)
  • Talen Energy (No. 1,854)
  • Prosperity Bancshares (No. 1,855)
  • NOV (No. 1,980)

Austin area

  • Dell Technologies (No. 183)
  • Flex (No. 887)
  • Digital Realty Trust (No. 1,063)
  • CrowdStrike (No. 1,490)

Dallas-Fort Worth

  • Caterpillar (No. 118)
  • Charles Schwab (No. 124)
  • McKesson (No. 195)
  • D.R. Horton (No. 365)
  • Texas Instruments (No. 374)
  • Vistra Energy (No. 437)
  • CBRE (No. 582)
  • Kimberly-Clark (No. 639)
  • Tenet Healthcare (No. 691)
  • American Airlines (No. 834)
  • Southwest Airlines (No. 844)
  • Atmos Energy (No. 1,025)
  • Builders FirstSource (No. 1,039)
  • Copart (No. 1,062)
  • Fluor (No. 1,153)
  • Jacobs Solutions (1,232)
  • Globe Life (1,285)
  • AECOM (No. 1,371)
  • Lennox International (No. 1,486)
  • HF Sinclair (No. 1,532)
  • Invitation Homes (No. 1,603)
  • Celanese (No. 1,845)
  • Tyler Technologies (No. 1,942)

San Antonio

  • Valero Energy (No. 397)
  • Cullen/Frost Bankers (No. 1,560)

Midland

  • Diamondback Energy (No. 471)
  • Permian Resources (No. 1,762)
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A version of this article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Texas plugs in among states at highest risk for summer power outages in 2025

hot, hot, hot

Warning: Houston could be in for an especially uncomfortable summer.

A new study from solar energy company Wolf River Electric puts Texas at No. 2 among the states most at risk for power outages this summer. Michigan tops the list.

Wolf River Electric analyzed the number of large-scale outages that left more than 5,000 utility customers, including homes, stores and schools, without summertime electricity from 2019 to 2023. During that period, Texas experienced 7,164 summertime power outages.

Despite Michigan being hit with more summertime outages, Texas led the list of states with the most hours of summertime power outages — an annual average of 35,440. That works out to 1,477 days. “This means power cuts in Texas tend to last longer, making summer especially tough for residents and businesses,” the study says.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the electric grid serving 90 percent of the state, predicts its system will set a monthly record for peak demand this August — 85,759 megawatts. That would exceed the current record of 85,508 megawatts, dating back to August 2023.

In 2025, natural gas will account for 37.7 percent of ERCOT’s summertime power-generating capacity, followed by wind (22.9 percent) and solar (19 percent), according to an ERCOT fact sheet.

This year, ERCOT expects four months to surpass peak demand of 80,000 megawatts:

  • June 2025 — 82,243 megawatts
  • July 2025 — 84,103 megawatts
  • August 2025 — 85,759 megawatts
  • September 2025 — 80,773 megawatts

One megawatt is enough power to serve about 250 residential customers amid peak demand, according to ERCOT. Using that figure, the projected peak of 85,759 megawatts in August would supply enough power to serve more than 21.4 million residential customers in Texas.

Data centers, artificial intelligence and population growth are driving up power demand in Texas, straining the ERCOT grid. In January, ERCOT laid out a nearly $33 billion plan to boost power transmission capabilities in its service area.

Houston ranks among top 5 cities for corporate HQ relocations in new report

h-town HQ

The Houston area already holds the title as the country’s third biggest metro hub for Fortune 500 headquarters, behind the New York City and Chicago areas. Now, Houston can tout another HQ accolade: It’s in a fourth-place tie with the Phoenix area for the most corporate headquarters relocations from 2018 to 2024.

During that period, the Houston and Phoenix areas each attracted 31 corporate headquarters, according to new research from commercial real estate services company CBRE. CBRE’s list encompasses public announcements from companies across various sizes and industries about relocating their corporate headquarters within the U.S.

Of the markets included in CBRE’s study, Dallas ranked first for corporate relocations (100) from 2018 to 2024. It’s followed by Austin (81), Nashville (35), Houston and Phoenix (31 each), and Denver (23).

According to CBRE, reasons cited by companies for moving their headquarters include:

  • Access to lower taxes
  • Availability of tax incentives
  • Proximity to key markets
  • Ability to support hybrid work

“Corporations now view headquarters locations as strategic assets, allowing for adaptability and faster reaction to market changes,” said CBRE.

Among the high-profile companies that moved their headquarters to the Houston area from 2018 to 2024 are:

  • Chevron
  • ExxonMobil
  • Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
  • Murphy Oil

Many companies that have shifted their headquarters to the Houston area, such as Chevron, are in the energy sector.

“Chevron’s decision to relocate its headquarters underscores the compelling advantages that position Houston as the prime destination for leading energy companies today and for the future,” Steve Kean, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, said in 2024. “With deep roots in our region, Chevron is a key player in establishing Houston as a global energy leader. This move will further enhance those efforts.”

According to CBRE, California (particularly the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas) lost the most corporate HQs in 2024, with 17 companies announcing relocations—12 of them to Texas. Also last year, Texas gained nearly half of all state-to-state relocations.

In March, Site Selection magazine awarded Texas its 2024 Governor’s Cup, resulting in 13 consecutive wins for the state with the most corporate relocations and expansions.

In a news release promoting the latest Governor’s Cup victory, Gov. Greg Abbott hailed Texas as “the headquarters of headquarters.”

“Texas partners with the businesses that come to our great state to grow,” Abbott said. “When businesses succeed, Texas succeeds.”

CBRE explained that the trend of corporate HQ relocations reflects the desire of companies to seek new environments to support their goals and workforce needs.

“Ultimately, companies are seeking to establish themselves in locations with potential for long-term success and profitability,” CBRE said.