University politics => hazardous wastes

[cameraman]

Ya know there are times when working for a large university can just suck. A professor runs his lab for decades and retires. The lab space becomes a political football and what ultimately happens is the lab gets locked and left to sit for 12 years. No joke, the lab was frozen in time, the people just put down their pens and left, in mid-experiment.

Now that all the people involved with that cluster**** of a decision have either retired or just plain died I get handed the task of cleaning it all up. It is amazing what bottles of chemicals do just sitting on the shelf for 10-30 years:eek:

And the paperwork, oh sweet Jesus, the paperwork:cry:

I'm looking at a whole lot of bottles that I really don't want broken in handling.

The bill for the disposal firm to haul it off to wherever is going to be obscene.

Just bitching as I return to C.A.S. number hell...

[Elmo T]

I'm looking at a whole lot of bottles that I really don't want broken in handling.

Got any picric acid? :thumbup:

This sounds like fun, assuming you are a hazmat technician. Not so much if you are the poor dude left with the mess.

[cameraman]

No big ole honkin' picric acid crystals for the bomb squad.

But I do have half empty bottles of dry chloroform that were left in a well lit location for a decade. I'd imagine the space above the chloroform is pretty pure phosgene by now...

I'm a biologist not a damn hazmat technician but I stayed at the Holiday Inn last weekend for training purposes.

[WickerBill]

How goes the struggle, cameraman?

[cameraman]

All the solid wastes are taken care of and I'll hopefully have the liquid wastes done by tomorrow. It helped greatly that the lab bought 99% of their chemicals from Aldrich or Sigma/Aldrich and Sigma's web site can bring up the required information on 30+ year old catalog numbers. Which is the exact opposite of my Thermo-Fisher experience. Turns out the cold rooms in the lab are hopeless because they are Forma units and when Thermo-Fisher bought out Forma the very first thing that they did was to shred all the spare parts for all equipment more than 10 years old. They don't want people repairing anything, they want you to buy new:flame: So for want of a few small but proprietary parts I'm supposed to drop >$65K on new walk-ins. If we find the money you can be damned sure we won't be buying anything from Thermo-Fisher.

[G.]

[QUOTE=cameraman;317213first thing that they did was to shred all the spare parts for all equipment more than 10 years old. They don't want people repairing anything, they want you to buy new:flame: So for want of a few small but proprietary parts I'm supposed to drop >$65K on new walk-ins. If we find the money you can be damned sure we won't be buying anything from Thermo-Fisher.[/QUOTE]Surprising. Spare parts are hideously expensive/marked-up. A warehouse full of proprietary small parts will pay for an awful lot of Sales junkets for the management.

Tried the Google? Grainger? Harbor Freight :gomer:?