CXIX. Problems Confronting the Safety and Pollution-Conscious Investigator
guidelines for transport and disposal of toxic nun-radioactive substances such as beryllium and its salts in order to insure safety to ourselves and to our environment.
Carol J Marcus, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry The University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences, Memphis, Tenn. 38163
The conscientious scientist who wishes to avoid polluting the environment with dangerous chemicals will not find it partieularly easy to do so. Our recent experience with disposal of beryllium chloride is a case in point. In the last few years I have had the dubious pleasure of working with BeC12, a potent inhibitor of an enzyme named fructose 1,6-diphosphatase (1, 2). Beryllium and its salts are extremely toxic. High levels of air contamination produce a pulmonary disorder called acute berylliasis, and lower levels in conjuction with prolonged exposure lead to a pulmonary and systemic disorder termed chronic berylliasis. Both are frequently fatal (3). Mortality rates from lung cancer far employees of a beryllium plant indicate beryllium to be an etiologic factor in the development of lung cancer, and new eases of beryllium disease continue to appear even though a threshold limit value for safe exposure to beryllium was adopted by industry in 1950 (4). Yet when we tried to avoid pouring our
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waste solutions down the drain (and thence into the Mississippi River) we ran into difficulty. The only University service for waste disposal is for radioactive waste, and they are not authorized to pick up anything other than radioactive waste. Calls to the toxicology department and the County Health Department provided no help. We even contacted researchers using beryllium a t other universities and their solution is to pour i t down the drain. Other than pouring it down the drain, the only solution that has occurred to us is to mix C'4 waste with the beryllium waste so that Radiological Safety will accept it. A second problem arose when we received a request from a colleague in California that we send a small sample of BeC12. The U. S. Post Office regulations do not appear to cover beryllium compounds, except to specify that beryllium cannot be shipped out of the country. We ended up packing it as carefully as possible and hoping it would arrive safely. Fortunately it did. There is obviously a pressing need for
Postscript After the submission of this article, I continued to erolore for oossible means of number of companies around the country which will do this. However, this entails packing and shipping the toxic material to them, and they mainly deal with large volumes of waste material. A recent publication entitled Laboratory Waste Disposal Manual published by the Manufacturing Chemists Association, describes a preeipitation procedure and suggests it be shipped back to the supplier. However, when I called the supplier, he told me that the beryllium was made overseas for his companv. eive me the name of * . but he refused to " the company. He then suggested that I take the beryllium and bury it or throw it in the ocean
REFERENCES 1. Marcus. C. J. 119711 Ph.D. Dissertation. Duke Unlver~ sity, Durham. North caru1ins. 2. Marcus. C. .I.. and Gelier. A . M. 119741 Fed. hi.33, 1380. 2. Stakin~er,H. E . (Editorl ,196111 Beryllium-Its I n d v r ~ trial Hygiene Aspects, Academic Prors, New York. 4. Stoeckle, J. D.. and Mancuss. T. (1974) S l ~ r n r eIR.3, 449.
