In order to maintain an appropriate laboratory environment, it is ideal for those engaged in experiments to be able to identify vulnerabilities in their own work environment in their daily experimental work. In this study, with the aim of gaining insight into students' perception of danger, a subject experiment to analyze the gaze of students as they perform safety checks in the laboratory was conducted using a virtual reality (VR) combined with eyetracking technology. Also, by comparing the results of students and safety managers, the influence of differences in their experience and knowledge on the perception of hazards through vision was discussed. The results implies that when students search for hazards in the laboratory, while looking around the entire room, they tend to spend less time gazing at the object, and the number of items they perceive as hazards and the number of inappropriate conditions they find are not necessarily high. In addition, the gazing time required by students to identify the danger of an object tends to be shorter than that of safety managers, suggesting that the criteria regarding objects and conditions perceived as hazardous may also have different characteristics than those of safety managers. It is obvious that observational behavior, which is the basis of experiments, also plays a very important role in the detection of laboratory hazards, and the specific characteristics and issues related to students' hazard perception obtained in this study are expected to provide basic knowledge that can be developed into specific practical education materials for hands-on training in laboratory condition observation and hazard perception.

A significant quantity of pumice released from the Fukutoku Okanoba submarine volcano on the Ogasawara Islands, Tokyo, Japan, in August 2021, drifted to various coasts of Japan by 2023. This study analyzed the surface constituents of pumice that washed ashore the Tokunoshima Island, Kagoshima Prefecture, and the components eluted after the pumice was immersed and shaken in water. Results indicated that SiO ₂ was the most abundant component on the pumice surface, followed by Al ₂O ₃ and Fe ₂O ₃. When the pumice was immersed and shaken in water for three months, fine particles precipitated, resulting in approximately 10% reduction in pumice weight. The amount of anionic and metallic components from the pumice was monitored from day 1 to day 49. It was observed that over 70% of seawater-derived components (Cl ^– , Br ^– , NO _3– , SO ₄ 2_– , Na, Mg, and Ca) adhering to the pumice were released into fresh water within 1–3 days. The immersion and agitation process also scraped the pumice surface, releasing Al and Fe, the primary metallic constituents of pumice, either as dissolved species or fine precipitates. Importantly, the study confirmed the absence of toxic heavy metals, including Cd, Cr, and Pb, in the eluted pumice, indicating that these hazardous elements were neither present nor leached out.