mfety in the chemkal laboratory
edited by MALCOLM M. RENFREW University of ldaho MOSCOW, ldaho 83843
/
Chemical Management
A Method for Waste Reduction Stanley H. Pine California State University. Los Angeles, CA 90032
Chemicals! A word to which the public reacts with emotion, usually negative. For the laboratory instructor and researcher, chemicals are the basis for their operations. Yet these scientists are faced with an increasing array of regulatory and social problems because their work with chemicals can produce chemical wastes. Considerable effort and expense is being expended to properly dispose of those wastes. A large industry of waste disposers and regulatory advisors has developed to face the many ~ r o b l e m swhich have arisen. For those of us who are involved with academic or small industrial laboratories, the necessity to handle and dispose of chemicals properly has become a rather burdensome obligation. An approach to the problem which has been relatively neglected, particularly in academic laboratories, is the management of chemicals so as t o minimize the generation of waste. In fact, the management of ehemicals can have a broader impact than just waste reduction. The use of valuable resources (chemical compounds) will be reduced, costs to the institution can be minimized, and the general efficiency of laboratory operations will be improved. Let us consider the beginning of the acquisition process for a chemical-purchasing.
Stanley Pine is Professor of Chemisbyat California State Uniuenity. Los Angeles. He earned a PhD at UCLA and spent a postdoctoral year at Haward before joining the Cal State faculty in 1964. He has spent research sabbaticals at CalTech and at the Univer~ityof Strasbourg, France where he was a Fulbri$d Visiting Professar. Pine isme University Chemical Safety ORicer at Cal State, Las Angeies, and i s a 1983recipient ol the Governor's Safety Award. He is a member of the American Chemical Society Commitlee an Chemical Safety and is the chairman of the ACS Task Force on RCRA.
The economics of buying chemicals (or almost any other commodity) is: more is cheaper. Weean usually buy a 1-kgquantity a t five or sin times the cost of a 100-g quantity. That is reasonable since packaging and handling of ten containers costs considerably more than similar handling of one container. However, from the viewpoint of overall economies and efficiency, is buyinglarge actually cheaper? We should ask whether that large, 1-kg quantity is needed? Will it be consumed in some reasonable amount of time? How will the large container be stored? Large bottles take up considerable space and they never seem to fit on the storeroom shelves! And finally, if it is not used up, how and a t what cost will the excess be disposed of! The last question has become the economic thorn for many of us. The costs of safely and legally disposing of partially filled and even extra unopened containers of chemicals is straining the budgets of many laboratory operations. How foolish i t is to pay to waste valuable resources! Purchase and inventory control is one way to get a handle on the ehemicals used by our institutions. We should buy only what we will need over a reasonable period of time. (The major chemical suppliers tell us that packaging size largely depends on consumer demand.) We should know where chemicals are located. From an emergency preparedness view we must know what chemicals are located in a specific laboratory or storeroom. As a model remember that we have clearly identified the location of radioactive materials for many, many years. Inventory control provides the basis for another important aspect of chemical management-sharing chemicals. All of us, unfortunately, have been indoctrinated with the idea that opened bottles of chemicals are not t o be trusted. In most cases that is not reasonable. We readily borrow chemicals from a neighboring laboratory when they are not
Volume 61
available in the central storeroom. If purity is in question, a rapid spectral analysis can be obtained. Partially used bottles of chemicals no longer needed hv one laboratow can be made avakble to other labs of the institution. This requires same coordination, but nothing beyond the inventory control systems that most of us use; i.e., some kind of card file system. And as we move into the computer age this inventory process can be made more and more efficient. At least one industrial facility now uses a computer-linked system a t each laboratory door to record when chemical containers enter and leave. I would guess that mast chemical labels will soon include a universal bar code for rapid scan identification. We must be careful not to let the sharing of chemicals generate a safety problem. Date the chemical containers when thev initiallv enter the facilitv. It mieht be helo
