Spring 2016 Post 3: Progress, woooooo!!!!!!

Progress has been made this week in regards to my internship. The first success of the week was getting all the chemicals that I logged last week documented in an Excell spreadsheet. Now the real hard part of the project comes into play. I have to find the SDS (Safety Data Sheet) for each of the chemicals and list in the spreadsheet the primary hazards of the chemical, the secondary hazards of the chemical, the CAS number, and if there is even an SDS available that goes with the chemical. This is a lot harder than I thought since the vast majority of these chemicals are over 10 years old. I even found one container that was from 1986. The fact that these chemicals are so old makes it hard to find information on some of them due to the company selling out to other companies, chemicals no longer being produced, new formulas for the chemicals, or any other assortment of reasons. I've got about a quarter of the way through the list so far this week. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it on Tuesday.

The second success of the week happened today. I finally got the opportunity to go into the labs and interview one of the most important researchers that works in the brain tumor unit at TGen. The interview consisted of 14 questions, that I came up with, in order to evaluate what kind of lab practices are done in the different labs at TGen. We intend to use this information to help us develop ways in which we can make the labs more sustainable and safe while at the same time not hindering lab work. Next week I have three more labs to interview and then I get to start analyzing the information that we collected from them.

That is pretty much everything I have to report for this week. Like always, ide like to leave you with something. This week my mentor at TGen shared a few links with me about chemical safety and why it is important. I would now like to share those links with you. If anything, at least, check out the last two links. the second link is a video about an accident that happened in a school and the last link is a video that is just unbelievable if you like explosions. They are all worth a look though.

http://www.csb.gov/

http://www.csb.gov/videos/after-the-rainbow/

Jet Fuel Plant Explosion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KuGizBjDXo