This study was aimed at evaluating safety culture in 20 chemical analytical laboratories in Oghara and Warri, Delta state. This was achieved through a determination of the safety performance between tertiary education chemical laboratories and industrial laboratories, private and government-owned laboratories, and technical and non-technical labs. The method employed in carrying out this study was the use of a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire and？a standard checklist. Comparison done between private and government-owned laboratories using t-test showed that safety culture of private-owned？laboratories, irrespective of whether industrial or tertiary education, were more significant (P < 0.05) than that of government-owned laboratories. Analysis of t-test for the survey indicated no significant difference between tertiary education and industrial laboratories (P > 0.05), with a mean value of 3.69798 for tertiary education laboratories and 3.62842 for industrial laboratories. Analysis of t-test also indicated P < 0.05 for technical (M = 75.00) and non-technical (M = 56.11) tertiary education laboratories. However, further t-test analysis indicated that there is a significant difference between safety performance in tertiary education laboratories and industrial laboratories (P < 0.05). The conclusion is that tertiary education chemical analytical laboratories have a high level of safety culture with an overall mean of 67.90 than industrial chemical analytical laboratories with an overall mean of 54.50. It is recommended that laboratories should establish an internal review process of incidents and corrective actions with the departmental safety committee and provide periodic safety seminars on lessons learned from incidents. A strong and effective safety management system should also be implemented in all analytical laboratories.
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