From mtang at snf.stanford.edu  Wed Apr  3 11:35:36 2002
From: mtang at snf.stanford.edu (Mary Tang)
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 11:35:36 -0800
Subject: HELP!
Message-ID: <3CAB5988.841C0596@snf.stanford.edu>

Wet Benchers:  HELP PLEASE!!

Monday night, an unidentified bottle of chemical was reported, found in
the Chemicals pass-through, in one of the HCl compartments.  This is a
standard, white plastic bottle, without a label, and containing a couple
of inches of clear fluid.  Since there is no label at all, the feeling
is that this bottle is either:

1.  A waste container -- in which case, it should have a "Hazardous
Waste" tag attached to it (filled out with all the pertinent info) and
should be kept on one of the top shelves, marked by red tape.

2.  A new chemical brought into the lab -- in which case, it needs to
have been cleared through a staff member and should have an official,
yellow, SNF chemicals label (filled out with pertinent info) stuck onto
it.

Leaving an unidentified chemical in the lab is unsafe and against SNF
policy.  And a total hassle for me, because now I'll have to fill out
loads of paperwork to get rid of it (and, by the way, the cost for
disposing of unknown chemicals is many-fold greater than known chemicals
-- I don't know what the cost is at Stanford, but I worked in a UC lab
where it cost $20K -- yes, twenty thousand dollars --  to cleanup about
a pound's worth of solid chemical waste of unknown composition.)

If this is yours, PLEASE take care of it as soon as possible -- no
questions asked (I'm assuming this is an unintentional oversight and
won't be committed again by the perpetrator.)

Thanks for your attention (now, off the soapbox),

Mary

--
Mary X. Tang, Ph.D.
National Nanofabrication Users' Network
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility
CIS Room 136, Mail Code 4070
Stanford, CA  94305
(650)723-9980
mtang at snf.stanford.edu