Chemical ethics practices in HEBUST of China

1 Introduction

With the rapid and continuous development of our economy, the chemical industry has expanded significantly, making substantial contributions to the national economy and improving people’s quality of life. However, this growth has also given rise to a range of ethical issues, such as safety concerns, environmental conflicts, and challeng10es in balancing the interests of various stakeholders. In recent years, ethical issues have surfaced in areas like chemical accident prevention, emergency response, and accident investigation. Throughout the entire chemical production process-from project planning and design to transportation, operation, and maintenance-safety risks are ever-present, potentially leading to engineering ethical dilemmas.

“Ethics in Chemistry” is a vast field with many facets. Jan Mehlich noted that Chemistry is understood as a multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral endeavor, which include the following (Mehlich et al., 2017):

1. Academic sector, with its basic science spreading across the spectrum from material sciences to the life sciences and chemical engineering;

2. Chemical industry, including the development, production, marketing, trade, storage, and transportation of chemicals;

3. Down- and upstream users, including consumers; and

4. Public sector, including national and international bodies tasked with the governance and regulation of chemicals as well as with the enforcement of chemical policies.

As early as the mid to late 19th century, American engineers began to consciously reflect on their profession, emphasizing the importance of social responsibility and professional ethics for engineers. By the 1970s, many developed countries had introduced engineering ethics education, emphasizing social and environmental responsibility (Crawley et al., 2014). This focus extends to chemical ethics as well.

At present, A lot of work is done on ethical practices, safety and security in chemical laboratories and research institutions as well. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has established a Committee for Ethics, Diversity, Equatity and Inclusion (CEDEI) to provide leadership in this regard (IUPAC, 2020). At University of Michigan, a Ethics in Engineering is set up for students (Chesney, n. d). In this four-week course, historical case studies are presented and analysed how they led to classic engineering failures. A disastrous event is introduced in each case and four modules including videos, reading materials, tests and topics for discussing. The students will discuss the case and summarize own viewpoints to deepen the understanding of ethical knowledge. A course Engineering Ethics is provided by MIT Open Course Ware which is a platform for free access to knowledge (Broome, n. d). The course includes three parts: theory, case studies and research, presentation. In Part 1, ethics, philosophy of engineering and the engineering ethics case study methodology are studied. Part 2 focuses on engineering ethics cases which are selected from scholarly literatures on engineering ethics. In part 3, students begin to prepare major papers and the team conduct to the in-depth studies. High quality training in practical ethics is offered by the course MSt in Practical Ethics at University of Oxford (Oxford University, 2024). Ethical and philosophical issues is the main content of this interdisciplinary course. In this course, Ethical Concepts and Methods is compulsory module, and five modules must be selected from eights options such as Climate, Environment and Animals, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Mental Health are optional. Each module is conducted through lectures, seminars, and discussion groups. In the end, students will complete a dissertation for assessment.

Students obtain ethical concepts and methods through theoretical knowledge and learn how to analyze real-life ethical problems. At Hebei University of Science and Technology (HEBUST), in addition to case studies, ethics are integrated into other practical courses. In the enterprise forum for students, enterprise engineers talk about the ethical issues they encountered. In addition, students can develop ethical awareness through real experience through visiting enterprises.

The Washington Accord is an international agreement between bodies responsible for accrediting engineering degree programmes (International Engineering Alliance, 2024). And higher education about engineering in China has joined the Washington Accord. In 2016, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued guidelines aimed at enhancing the chemical ethics curriculum for chemistry majors in universities (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2016). How to promote chemical ethics education keeping up with the latest time is one of the challenges faced by chemical professional education.

At HEBUST, “the ethical responsibility of understanding diversity and inclusivity” in the fourth edition Washington Accord in 2021, were included in the scope of ethical literacy for engineering graduates. “The Hague Ethical Guidelines” (OPCW, n. d.) were adopted on October 2015, by the OPCW and were endorsed by IUPAC May 4, 2016. China Hebei University of Science and Technology-Research Center for Chemical Safety & Security and Verification Technology effectively combined the teaching knowledge with ethics education and the implementation work of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Convention (Convention) (OPCW, 2024) under the Hague Ethical Guidelines. In addition to case studies, chemical ethics are integrated into other practical courses, allowing students to develop ethical awareness through real-world experiences.

2 Profile of chemical ethics education in HEBUST

HEBUST located in Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei, is a key multidisciplinary university of Hebei Province. In 2007, HEBUST was evaluated by the Ministry of Education as “Excellent” in undergraduate teaching work. In 2011, it was selected into the second batch of colleges and universities for “Excellent Engineer Education and Cultivation Program”. In 2016, it was selected as a national first-class university supported by Hebei Province. The university has 15 undergraduate colleges, two national experimental teaching demonstration centers, two national teaching teams, 79 undergraduate programs, 16 first-level disciplines with master’s degree authorization, and seven categories of professional master’s authorization. In the past five years, it has undertaken more than 3,000 national and provincial-level scientific research projects, such as the National “973” Program, the National “863” Program (Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, 2006a, 2006b) Special Key Projects for National Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation, and the National Social Science Fund, and won 39 provincial and ministerial-level awards.

In HEBUST there are many majors and colleges based on chemistry. College of chemical and pharmaceutical engineering is one of the oldest colleges in HEBUST. It was founded in 1965 and now it has the authorities for bachelor, master, and PhD degree, with a deep foundation of chemical engineering. In 1998, when the Ministry of Education merged all kinds of pharmaceutical majors into pharmaceutical engineering, such as biochemical pharmaceutical major, chemical pharmaceutical major, and Chinese classical medicine pharmaceutical, HEBUST was one of the several universities having pharmaceutical engineering major.

The colleges and majors based on chemistry were listed in Table 1.

HEBUST has been adhering to the goal of building a national first-class university with distinctive characteristics, where all students and teachers have been following the school motto of “promoting development and fulfilling duties”. It is sparing no effort to promote its development, comprehensive competitiveness and external influence, and construct the modern university system. It also makes efforts to develop its distinctive school characteristics and become an important base for cultivation of regional high-quality innovative talents, high-level scientific research, high-quality social service, cultural inheritance and innovation and international cooperation.

A team of professors serving local enterprises has been established in HEBUST since the Convention came into force in 1997, which played an important role in the implementation of the Convention and the inspections in China. The professors have contributed greatly to the national implementation work for more than 25 years and have been highly recognized by the government. The research center for chemical safety & security and verification technology established by the professors was the important center for verification technologies associated with the Convention and highly praised by the local government and national authorities. China Hebei University of Science and Technology-Research Center for Chemical Safety & Security and Verification Technology has been registered as a Non-Government Organization (NGO) to attend the fifth Review Conference (RC-5) and the 28th Conferences of State Parties (CSP-28) of OPCW. HEBUST has indeed combined the teaching knowledge with ethics education under the implementation work of the Convention recently.

Based on the ethics education development, HEBUST focused on ethics core values in all majors. Especially for chemists and professors, it is necessary to focus on the ethical aspects both in teaching and practical work. Integrating ethical responsibilities and education into concrete engineering practices is an important work in the university education. How to promote chemical ethics education keeping up with the latest time is one of the challenges faced by chemical professional education. HEBUST showed the strong abilities in this aspect and established teaching practices in chemical ethics education, which was shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1:

Chemical ethics education in HEBUST.

By incorporating chemical ethics in HEBUST, students are expected to gain a deep understanding of concepts and theories related to chemical ethics, with enhancement of sensitivity to ethical issues in chemicals, independently understanding and value ethical issues in engineering practice, and cultivating a sense of responsibility to consciously face and solve ethical problems. Besides, students can master the basic norms of chemical ethics and improve the decision-making ability of chemical ethics to solve complex ethical issues in chemical engineering practice.

3 Practices of chemical ethics education at HEBUST

3.2 Chemical ethics courses for different majors

As illustrated in Figure 2, different majors based on chemistry, applied chemistry and chemical engineering at HEBUST incorporate chemical ethics into classroom teaching.

Figure 2:

Chemical ethics education in different majors’ courses in HEBUST.

Specialized ethics courses have been established for students majoring in chemical engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, environmental engineering, safety engineering, and biochemical engineering, to raise awareness of ethical issues of both teachers and students. Each major incorporates chemical ethics into the evaluation of learning outcomes (as shown in Table 3).

Table 3:

Specialized ethics courses for different majors.

Majors	Specialized ethics courses	Objectives
		Engineering and society	Environment and sustainable development
Chemical engineering	Chemical engineering environmental protection and safety technology, Ethics of chemical engineering	Students have enough abilities to use relevant professional knowledge to evaluate the impact of engineering issues on society, health, safety, law, and culture.	Students could understand and evaluate the impact of technical practice in the engineering field on the sustainable development of the environment and society.
Pharmaceutical engineering	Pharmaceutical environmental protection and safety technology, Ethical of pharmaceutical engineering
Environmental engineering	Principles of environmental engineering, Environmental protection and sustainable development, Environmental monitoring technologies
Safety engineering	Safety evaluation and risk analysis, Safety laws and regulations
Biochemical engineering	Environmental biotechnology, Genetic engineering ethics

3.3 Classroom and extracurricular practices in HEBUST

The chemical ethics courses at HEBUST are carried out in both classroom learning and extracurricular activities. For example, chemical ethics modules are incorporated into the courses from freshman to senior year for students in both classroom learning and extracurricular activities at different stages.

3.3.1 Chemical ethics contents embedded in different courses

Chemical ethics was incorporated in the teaching processes of basic classes such as inorganic chemistry and analytical chemistry, which is necessary for freshmen. For example, many raw materials of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) listed in the Annex of the Chemical Weapons Convention are introduced to freshmen. And the dual uses of chemicals must be controlled by both the Convention and chemical ethics. When professional teachers use the traditional examination mode to investigate whether students have mastered the properties and uses of chemicals, they pay more attention to investigate whether students can identify which uses are in line with chemical ethics. Thus the students can realize the importance and necessity of chemical ethics, laying a solid foundation for the later career and giving them independent thinking ways. The deeds and achievements of pharmaceutical chemist Felix Hoffmann were cited in the medicinal chemistry course. Students are guided to think about the role and responsibility of scientists in chemical ethics. A specific teaching process is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3:

An example of integration of chemical ethics and curriculum.

Felix Hofmann made outstanding contributions to the preparation and application of aspirin, which benefited countless patients. And he also synthesized “heroin”. Heroin can be used to relieve pain, relieve coughs, treat bronchitis, depression and even gastric cancer, but it can cause damage if it is abused. Through discussion, students could gain a deeper understanding of the role of chemical scientists in the development of science and society by teaching ways and discussions illustrated in Figure 3. There were two topics to discuss during the classroom time. ①If science and technology have a negative impact on society, should scientists bear the corresponding social responsibilities? ②Whether science and technology develop without restriction? Students can be grouped to debate, which can be shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4:

Debate about the invention of Felix Hofmann.

3.3.2 Practical platforms between HEBUST and enterprises

Chemical ethics education is also applied in many practical production activities in HEBUST. The junior year is critical for students to apply theoretical knowledge in practice. Students are organized to participate in laboratory research projects so that they can consider ethical issues in the design and conduct of experiments. By combining basic knowledge of the students with practical activities, they can deepen their learning impression and cultivate their practical ability.

In addition, engineers from enterprises and designing institutions are invited to give lessons to students biweekly, fostering greater attention to chemical ethics in workplace scenarios. The university established a “practical month” program in which students live and studied in enterprises. On-site experiences could enhance students’ understanding of the chemical ethics in the production process.

(1) Practical activities in HEBUST: The chemical ethics issues in classic pharmaceutical activities were presented to students. This had a positive promoting effect on students’ participation in practical activities. For example, there were activities and lectures of “MuXing Engineering Forum” and “Senior Engineers Take You to the Plant” at HEBUST, in which many senior engineers were invited to give lectures helping students have a solid understanding of chemical ethics. Part of the lectures are shown in Table 4. Students always were asked to take part in the group discussion during the lectures, which had a positive effect on the lectures. In addition, HEBUST promoted exchange activities among students majoring in science and engineering and students majoring in humanities and social sciences to achieve innovative and interdisciplinary development. It is helpful to cultivate a sense of social responsibility and the ability to deal with moral problems for students. And there is a small pilot workshop in the school where students can use Distributed Control System (DCS) for simulation operations.

Table 4:

List of the lectures.

No.	Speech titles	Lectures’ owners
1	Current situation and development trend of chemical pharmaceutical industry in China	Designing institute
2	Frontier technology of biomedicine	Biological drug enterprise
3	Chemical medicine frontier technology	Chemical pharmaceutical enterprise
4	Intelligent manufacturing and pharmaceutical engineering	Designing institute
5	Introduction to Chinese medicine pharmaceutical engineering	Professors from other universities
6	New drug development and talent training in pharmaceutical enterprises	Pharmaceutical enterprise
7	Electrical lighting of pharmaceutical clean factory	Design institute
8	Environmental control and corporate environmental responsibility for the high-quality development of apis	Environmental enterprise
9	Current situation and development prospect of medical devices	Pharmaceutical enterprise
10	GMP management in drug manufacturing	Design institute
11	Thoughts on deepening the governance of VOCs in pharmaceutical industry under the background of pollution reduction and carbon reduction	Environmental enterprise
12	Technology and engineering practice of water pollution control in pharmaceutical industry	Design institute
13	Opportunities and challenges for green development of pharmaceutical industry	Professors from other university
14	Pharmacopoeia, regulations and implementation of pharmaceutical water systems	Medical products administration
15	Pharmaceutical pilot technology research and quality research	Design institute

(2) Practical activities in enterprises: There are many practical activities in enterprises during study at HEBUST. Students participate in the engineering activities in which chemical ethics are incorporated. For example, in the wastewater treatment process, the operation of professional equipment, process optimization, and chemical ethics are combined. Enterprise personnel will investigate whether the students have the quality of engineering ethics through practice simulation and case analysis. By this way, students awareness of engineering ethics can be cultivated in the practice.

3.3.3 Speeches given by experts retired from the OPCW

In the senior year, education in chemical ethics should focus on comprehensive practice and international exchange. Chemical ethics education helped students incorporate ethical awareness into their research and later career.

HEBUST frequently invited members of the Scientific Advisory Board, former inspectors of the OPCW, and member of Advisory Board on Education & Outreach (ABEO) to give lectures on the Convention and chemical ethics to senior students. Students can discuss and exchange cutting-edge issues related to the Hague Ethics Guidelines and Chemical Weapons Ethics with the real experts. Some topics of the lectures are shown in Table 5.

Table 5:

Lectures given by experts having work experience in OPCW.

No.	Title	Experts	Background
1	Introduction to the hague ethical guidelines	Mr. Tang	Many years’ work experience in the OPCW
2	Introduction to implementation of the convention	Mr. Wang	Former inspector of the OPCW
3	MSDS of chemicals scheduled of CWC	Mr. Liang	Former inspector of the OPCW
4	The role of SAB	Dr. Sun	Member of the SAB
5	The role of ABEO	Dr. Zhou	Member of the ABEO

1. SAB-scientific advisory board. ABEO-advisory board on education & outreach.

3.4 Chemical ethics integrated in design assignments

Senior students have design homework to mix theoretical knowledge and practical experience according to chemical ethics. As shown in Figure 5, the reinforcement of students’ chemical ethics education is achieved by establishing sound designing principles such as environmental and safety awareness into the factory designing homework.

Figure 5:

Integrate and strengthen chemical ethics education in the factory design course and homework.

In the pharmaceutical engineering curriculum system, factory designing is a highly practical and comprehensive course. This course not only involved how to comprehensively apply professional basic knowledge to design and select equipment, but also involved a series of precise evaluations of the process flow.

The teachers of the designing courses would give detailed process analysis and discussion on legal norms, intrinsic safety, health and environmental protection, and reasonably integrate chemical ethics elements to cultivate students’ chemical ethics awareness. Additionally, the designing report is required to include safety, health and environmental protection sections and this will makes the students realize that chemical ethics is an indispensable part of the design engineering.

3.4.1 Good designing conception

Professional pharmaceutical engineers have a better understanding of the potential risks associated with engineering than others. Pharmaceutical and chemical engineers had an inescapable social and environmental ethical responsibility to prevent engineering risks. The precision of the factory design concept, which complied with the principles of legality and compliance, determined the success or failure of the entire project. It is necessary to follow the primary principle of pharmaceutical chemical ethics in the design process of pharmaceutical factories. Public safety, health, well-being and environmental protection were considered as priority. In the process of factory design, engineers should not only consider economic, technological, geographical and other factors, but also take into account societal, environmental and cultural aspects. The selection of the factory site must be determined from the perspective of meteorology, terrain, geology and water sources, in order to avoid adverse effects on the surrounding environment. We analyzed this content based on project cases in class, guiding students to establish the correct concept of pharmaceutical factory design.

3.4.2 Emphasis on green chemistry

Green chemistry advocates governance from the source of process design. Green chemistry emphasizes the innovation of clean production technology and equipment to minimize environmental pollution and energy consumption. And it focuses on achieving source control by improving the atomic economy of chemical reactions. Intrinsic safety design refers to actively eliminating and avoiding chemical process risks caused by human error, equipment failure. The concept of green chemistry and intrinsic safety is in accordance with chemical ethics.

Chemical reactions are the core of chemical processes, and the key to process development is to choose the appropriate reaction materials, routes, and conditions to reduce safety risks and environmental pollution. Quantitative assessment of the hazards of chemical reaction processes is a particularly important aspect in factory design.

3.4.3 Environment, health, safety (EHS) awareness and responsibility care

The pharmaceutical process involves the treatment of toxic and harmful chemicals. During the production process, a certain amount of exhaust gas, wastewater, and solid waste were generated, which can easily lead to fire and explosion accidents and pose great risks. Given the importance of production safety and environmental protection, the Chinese government established sound regulations. And it continuously developed production safety and environmental protection technologies that were suitable for chemical processes. Additionally, it mandated that chemical projects must pass safety and environmental reviews before construction.

In the basic and detailed design stages, we introduce a series of cases in the course teaching to help students understand how to prevent engineering risks, including: adopting new equipment and technologies (such as microchannel reactors) to reduce the quality of hazardous chemicals stored inside the equipment by enhancing equipment reliability and intrinsic safety; adopting interlocking control, instrument protection system, and other engineering control measures. Operability and economic rationality should also be considered.

4 Results and discussion

In the process of chemical ethics teaching, 1,400 students from freshman to senior year in five majors, namely environmental science, chemical safety, pharmaceutical engineering, chemical engineering and technology and bioengineering, were involved (2024 across all levels of teaching). We conducted a questionnaire survey on students of different grades and majors to capture student feedback on their impression of the effect of ethics education. The survey focused on the following five statements: “The perfect combination of chemical ethics education and professional courses”, “It has great influence on learning attitude”, “It has a great influence on the future chemistry work”, “It has great influence on the value orientation of life”, “Teachers can give positive and negative feedback on the content of chemical ethics” and “Broaden horizons and interdisciplinary thinking”. “Basic match” means that there is a certain degree of correspondence, but there are still some differences or not very obvious corresponding relationships. “Match” indicates a relatively high degree of correspondence. The overall is relatively consistent, but there may still be some room for improvement. “Perfect match” represents a high degree of consistency and completely conforms to the described situation or expectation. We randomly selected 352 students for the survey, of which 25 % were students from each grade and 20 % from each major to ensure the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data. The survey was conducted in the form of an anonymous online questionnaire to ensure the speed and accuracy of the answers to the questionnaire. The feedback results are shown in Figure 6, 80 % of the students believed that chemical ethics education was very useful and had a positive impact on their professional courses, learning attitudes, life values, and vision expansion; a few students believed that basic ethics education knowledge was meaningful; about 5 % of the students were reserved and believed that ethics education could basically reach a satisfactory level.

Figure 6:

The effect of chemical ethics education.

5 Summary and conclusions

HEBUST has implemented a comprehensive and innovative approach to integrating chemical ethics across its chemistry and engineering programs. Driven by national priorities in China and international norms like the Hague Ethics Guidelines of the OPCW, HEBUST has redesigned its curriculum to achieve four key objectives-enhancing sensitivity, increasing knowledge, improving reasoning abilities, and fostering professional responsibility around chemical ethics issues.

Through a combination of revamped course content, interactive teaching pedagogies, industry collaborations, and the participation of external experts, HEBUST exposes students to chemical ethics concepts right from their first year. Case studies, group discussions, debates and scenario-based learning opportunities allow students to grapple with ethical dilemmas throughout their academic journey. By the final year, students are prepared to incorporate ethical considerations into their capstone design projects.

HEBUST distinguished itself with multifaceted approaches. These approaches combined classroom learning with practices, utilized third-party accreditation, addressed critical field issues, and fostered interdisciplinary collaboration. This comprehensive chemical ethics education model exemplify the commitment of HEBUST to cultivating socially responsible engineers and chemists equipped to address emerging challenges at the intersection of science, technology and society.

As chemical ethics garners increasing global attention, HEBUST’s initiatives serve as a potential blueprint for other institutions aiming to produce next generation chemical talent with a strong ethical foundation. By prioritizing chemical ethics, HEBUST is nurturing innovators capable of steering sustainable technological progress with safeguarding public welfare and environment.