A couple of our long-time lab members, Sherwood Parker and Chris Kenney have forwarded us this note from the Director at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory about a recent explosion of a chemical waste bottle in one of the labs at LBL. Fortunately, nobody was present in the room at the time and, as a result, nobody was injured.
This should be a reminder to all of us, however, that a number of the materials with which we routinely work can be potentially dangerous .... particularly when mixed with incompatible materials. We are fortunate that we have dedicated handling of most of our acid waste in our acid neutralization system and our HF collection tank. We also have tried to make sure that we handle solvents only at the stainless steel solvent hoods. Nonetheless, we do have a number of locations where we do collect chemical waste and, as a result, can also have reactions of the type that occurred at LBL.
I'd like to ask each of you to use this event as a reminder that we all need to redouble our efforts to insure that we are handling chemicals in an approved manner and that we are carefully disposing of them in appropriate containers.
Thanks for your ongoing attention to proper chemical handling and waste disposal.
John
-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: | FW: Safety Alert (fwd) |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, 7 Apr 2009 19:42:56 -0700 (PDT) |
| From: | Chris Kenney <kenney@slac.stanford.edu> |
| To: | shott@snf.stanford.edu |
| CC: | rissman@snf.stanford.edu |
Hi John and Paul, I posted this at the entrance to the fab. Chris ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 19:29:12 -0700 From: "Parker, Sherwood" <sher@slac.stanford.edu> To: mtang@stanford.edu, "Kenney, Christopher" <kenney@slac.stanford.edu>, "Hasi, Jasmine" <jazz9152@slac.stanford.edu> Subject: FW: Safety Alert I expect nothing like this would happen at SNF, but thought I'd forward this in case it interested you. Sherwood ________________________________ From: Paul Alivisatos [mailto:APAlivisatos@lbl.gov] Sent: Mon 4/6/2009 12:42 PM To: Berkeley Lab Community Subject: Safety Alert Dear Colleagues, Late on Tuesday, March 31st, a 4-liter glass bottle of waste aqua regia (nitric and hydrochloric acids) violently exploded in Building 66, destroying the bottle and the secondary containment, damaging other waste containers, shattering the fume hood sash, and scattering glass and acid mist throughout the room. Fortunately, nobody was present in the room and there were no injuries. However, this incident had the potential to seriously injure, maim, or kill. An ongoing investigation reveals that a researcher had erroneously poured waste isopropyl alcohol into the acid waste and closed the cap. Over the next 30 minutes the nitric acid oxidized the alcohol and pressure built up in the bottle until it exploded. In addition, organic waste containers were stored in the same secondary containment as the oxidizing acid waste, which can be a recipe for a fire. Fortunately in this case, the red flammable liquid cans were not punctured and a fire was avoided . Mixing of incompatible wastes is a relatively common cause of laboratory explosions. Accidents such as this, involving an inadvertent mixture of a strong oxidizer (nitric acid) and a fuel (isopropyl alcohol) are very predictable and thus are avoidable. Specific guidance on handling these types of chemicals is provided in the LBNL Chemical Hygiene and Safety Plan (http://www.lbl.gov/ehs/chsp/html/storage.shtml ) and the LBNL Hazardous Waste Generator Guidelines (http://www.lbl.gov/ehs/waste/wm_pub_3092_ch1.shtml ) as well as the corresponding safety classes. I urge each of you to take the following steps: * double-check that each researcher that needs to receive training in handling hazardous materials and waste generation has done so, including courses such as Chemical Hygiene and Safety (EHS0348) and Generation of Hazardous Waste (EHS0604); * use less hazardous materials if possible; * assure that incompatible chemicals are stored separately; * inspect each waste container in your lab for gas generation potential; and, * as part of a safety step in your experimental protocols, assure that any reactions are quenched, either by neutralization or dilution. Regards, Paul -- A. Paul Alivisatos Interim Director Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology University of California, Berkeley
No comments:
Post a Comment