Safety Lake is located 450 metres south of the west end of Meadow Lake (EMPR Bulletin #4). Meadow Lake is 30 kilometres west-northwest of 70 Mile House.

The lake is a semi-evaporitic playa lake. It is located in the "Green Timber Plateau" area (EMPR Bulletin 4), a semi-arid plateau area averaging 1130 metres elevation which is part of the Cariboo Plateau and host to several playa lakes. The area is underlain by alkaline plateau basalt flows of the Miocene to Pleistocene Chilcotin Group, mantled by a thin cover of glacial till and glaciofluvial sediments. Annual precipitation averages between 300 and 400 millimetres (EMPR Paper 1991-1).

Safety Lake contains sodium carbonate-rich brine and "Winter and Permanent Crystal" (natron or hydrated sodium carbonate). At the end of the dry season in 1937 (EMPR Bulletin 4) the lake was completely dry and the surface of the lake was covered with a white encrustation from 5 millimetres to 2.5 centimetres thick (EMPR Bulletin #4) approximately 2.0 hectares in size. The surface encrustation at Safety Lake is similar to that at Goodenough Lake which is underlain by 20 centimetres of greenish muddy material containing 50 to 75 per cent natron crystals underlain by black oozy mud. Canadian Occidental Petroleum staked the Soda 53 claim in 1989, collected a water and a winter crystal sample and completed analyses for sodium carbonate and other alkalai salts (Assessment Report 20080). Canoxy also completed an airborne infrared survey to test for dissolved solids in the lakewaters.