Tracking your lab’s chemicals is a vital basic step to ensuring everyone’s safety.
A lot can go wrong very quickly in a laboratory that lacks a system for managing chemicals. Expired solutions, mislabeled solvents, environmental damage, reactive chemicals placed side-by-side — these careless missteps can ruin hours of research, if not level a lab. Fortunately, methods exist to prevent catastrophe and streamline the process of tracking materials. Any physician or researcher can operate a world-class facility by following a few crucial steps.
What NOT to Do
Cautionary tales abound when it comes to lab chemicals. The biggest mistake, according to April Barts, MT, executive director of Clinical Laboratory Consulting and former director of a major endocrinology lab, is an open container. No matter the chemical inside, a substance left vulnerable could spill, oxidize, or inadvertently mix with organic material. She has seen labs make this error many times, and often they suffer the consequences.
If the staff is not educated on how to handle a spill, these effects are compounded. Barts has encountered labs without hazardous spill kits, goggles, or eye wash stations, which are all crucial to a clean-up. She recommends monthly safety inspections and regular staff updates on the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to avert such disasters.
Richard Flaherty, executive vice president at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), told Lab Manager magazine that the second major no-no is alphabetizing. Reagent chemicals will likely end up next to each other, like acetone and benzoyl peroxide. Materials should instead be grouped together by family and application.
“Usually the worst is cleaning materials with acetic or hydrochloric acid (HCL) for maintenance,” Barts explains. “Larger laboratories may have more volatile chemicals, but that usually also includes a safety officer overseeing the storage and processing.”
Proper labeling is key to ensuring safe storage, as is the disposal of expired chemicals. Chemical notations are against regulation as labels because they are more easily confused than full names. It can be tempting to save time with “HCL,” or money by using expired chemicals, but the end costs will far exceed the short-lived benefits.
The Elements of Chemical Tracking
Three basic steps comprise the process of chemical tracking: inventory, use, and post-use. Inventory involves obtaining and storing chemicals. Flaherty believes that this step centers on expiration dates, which should be recorded upon arrival. He also recommends buying in small quantities rather than bulk to avoid the dangers of old chemicals. For example, diethyl ether, a peroxide former, can become unstable and even explosive if its short shelf life is overlooked.
The “use” stage is straightforward — the instructions for each chemical should be followed and containers should be immediately closed and placed back in their designated station. Read the material safety data sheet (MSDS) that comes along with each item. “Do not just place it in a book,” Barts warns.
“Post-use,” on the other hand, is far more complex. This step describes waste removal, which requires “close management, wellestablished safe management protocols, effective communication, and frequent inspections,” according to Flaherty.
Meticulous labels and logs are a must. Chemicals may receive accidental contamination and form new compounds, which necessitates proper testing prior to disposal and the possibility of new labeling. This holds especially true for mysterious “forgotten” chemicals that might be found in the back corner of a closet or other location. Without identifying these unknown substances, an accidental toxic mix may occur. Regular inspections of the premises can preempt the misplacement and neglect of materials.
Lab Management Must-Haves
The only sure-fire way to track chemicals is a digital database. Many options exist, but Barts advises lab managers to choose simple yet comprehensive software. “You can buy tons of programs out there, but the easiest tracking program is educating the staff and finding a system that everyone understands. It is more important to make the staff understand the complexities of the chemicals and logging the inventory, lot number, expiration date, open date, and open expiration date,” she says.
Expensive inventory tracking software is unnecessary for most labs. One free program exists that offers a perfectly good platform for managing chemicals. The online system Quartzy was designed by two scientists who met in a research lab at Columbia University and has a simple interface that fits the needs of most laboratories. It includes Microsoft Excel downloads and streamlines order requests to avoid duplicates. Quartzy is used widely across many U.S. universities and is available free of charge by selling advertising space across the program. No download is required.
If you cannot stand ads, you might want to consider a paid subscription to a different program. Lab Inventory also contains a simple interface, but requires a computer download rather than online-only use. Users can upload existing Excel inventory sheets for an easy conversion. The program was developed by ATGC Labs and offers a free 60-day trial, but otherwise requires payment. The investment may be worth-while for those seeking a somewhat more sophisticated system that provides a barcode scanning system rather manual entry, details about usage patterns, and forecasts of future chemical demands.
For labs looking to reduce chemical costs, Lab Guru offers a platform focused on avoiding mistakes with orders and reducing waste. The program generates a “Shopping List” to make sure that the correct amounts of required chemicals are ordered in a timely manner. Lab Guru starts at $10 per month, but has a 30-day free trial.
Aside from a tracking system, Barts recommends that any lab with volatile or dangerous chemicals invest in a fume hood and biohazard cabinet. The one-time expense of these tools is well worth the return in safety. Combined with frequent expiration checks and the sealing of containers, the chemical management of any lab should remain emergency-free.
— Mapes is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., and a regular contributor to Endocrine News.
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