As a researcher, you may be tasked with doing some rather dangerous activities. It depends on the field, but I have been told before 'Mix this, this, and this. Here's your blast-shield.' Luckily nothing happened and the reaction was repeated without incident. However, when you're doing frontier research, you may be working on something that no one else has seen before.
This means several things:
1) no instruction manual or super-helpful review
2) no one is an expert in their entire field and an advisor may not know much about something you end up having to do to continue down a given path of research
3) no one has figured out if it explodes or not yet
I particularly work in chemistry, so I have most of my expertise there. I cannot expound on the possible dangers of computer science or physics, etc. as I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of those fields and don't really plan to. Computer science would be interesting but the existence of wireless networks and satellites and everything actually working blows my mind.
So, as a very basic and incomplete guide, here's a short list of the many things you should be aware of. They may mention some of this in lecture or lab but you don't really pick up on lab safety until you start to read around or really engage in talks with experience people:
-Glass is really, really, really sharp. A lot of that glass is covered in chemicals which will be in direct contact with your blood. Nitrile gloves aren't going to help here.
-Hydrofluoric acid is a particularly 'weak acid' but it'll pass through your skin and leech calcium from your bones. You are a molecule. Free fluorine atoms will fluorinate you. This is bad as well. Treat burns with calcium gluconate, which you should probably have on hand. (E-Med Link) By the way, HF is a colorless gas which will eat through glass.
-DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, or methyl sulfoxide) is a common organic solvent which will dissolve most organic compounds pretty readily. It will pass through your skin along with anything in it.
-Look out for volatile or powdered brominated compounds. They are often labeled as irritants and lachrymatory agents (tear gas) as the vapors will form HBr in your nose or eyes. This could happen with chlorinated materials as well.
-Ethers, R-O-R, will form peroxides when a bottle is opened and resealed with air inside. Typically a bottle of ether contains some agents to hinder this formation but once it is expired it will form these peroxides in the threaded cap. When you go to open it, this will set off the peroxide. Ethers are generally flammable. Therefore, you've set off a small bomb in your hands and you're probably covered in flaming, fuming chemicals.
-Perchlorates, such as perchloric acid, are similar in nature to peroxides. However, they will build up over time in a fume hood and can detonate. There are special perchlorate hoods. As far as I know, they sort of wash themselves from time to time to purge the build up of perchlorates.
-Nitroxide, nitroso, azides, and other many nitrogen or nitrogen-oxygen groups pose an explosive risk. Working with click chemistry, I was performing reactions with sodium azide (NaN3). This is the stuff they put in air bags since a large enough charge passed through it will release all those N's as nitrogen gas. The formula here is: 2 NaN3 -> 2Na + 3N2
So, every 130 grams (0.286 pounds) of azide reacted in this way will yield 67.2 L (17.75 gallons) of nitrogen gas.
-Open bottles under the hood. Things like bromine will immediately release pent up vapors in a cloud of smoke, sometimes invisibly. Fine powders might be carried off in the motion of opening the container.
