Excerpt taken from John K. Borchardt’s article, Proper Disposal or Reuse of Old Laboratory Chemicals, Lab Manager Magazine May 2011 issue. Having periodic cleanup days during which old chemical samples and unused/nonfunctional equipment is

Staff reductions can result in severe challenges to proper chemical waste disposal management. In some recent cases, entire large facilities have been closed.

The use of warning signs to designate particular hazards is not just a good idea. It’s the law.

Laboratories frequently accumulate bottles of old chemicals, often toxic or hazardous, that are no longer used. Laboratory managers can use several strategies to properly reuse or dispose of these chemicals.

For most, being organized means “a place for everything and everything in its place,” but the true definition of being organized is being able to find things when you need them, not three weeks later.

Know where the safety equipment is. Don’t eat or drink on the job. Wear the right clothes. And please don’t casually pour chemicals down the drain. Such precautions may sound elementary, but these important and fundamental lab safety practices must be mastered or quality down the line could suffer.

We all know how diamonds are formed. You take a lump of carbon and subject it to intense pressure and high temperatures, and magically those carbon atoms are pressed into a diamond. The diamonds we are discussing in this article are formed much more easily.

Developing profitable new products and processes is the major mission of corporate laboratories. Professors justify their research grants aimed at developing new knowledge by describing how the research can eventually result in new products and processes to create new business, improve health, or protect the environment. Government labs justify their research in the same way.

In 2002, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) embarked on an educational project to leave no young manager behind.

Many lab managers still remember them from their student days—a handful of hastily stapled printouts sternly titled “Laboratory etiquette—Acceptable standards of conduct.” Those were rules to live by, and the smallest violation landed a budding laboratory scientist in front of the ticked-off chief instructor.