Spring 2016 Post 4: Playing in the labs

Hello all, and welcome back to my blog, where I shall tell you all about the woos and woes of my week at TGen. I would first like to start off with a woo. I got a giant bag of peanut butter filled m&m's for my office. I hide them in my super secret food drawer with the rest of my super secret food. The reason it's super secret you ask? Well, that's simple. First off, I don't want people to know where all the good food is, this way they can't steal it; and secondly, I'm not sure if were allowed to store food in our office and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask. Anyways let's get to some real business.

This week I got to spend more time going through the labs interviewing the researchers about their lab practices and sustainability efforts. I was only able to interview two scientists this week, both of wich work in the pancreatic cancer unit. This leaves me with one more lab to interview (I think) on the east side of floor four. I'm not entirely sure if we're going to interview the labs on the third floor or the west side of floor four yet, but I hope we do. The more information we get the better.

Also in regards to strolling through the labs, Kathleen and I scoped out some potential spots that we hope to designate as an SAA (Satellite Accumulation Area). This is just a place where all the scientists can place their chemical waste so that facilities can come through and take it away without bothering the researchers or accidently taking the wrong stuff. Apparently this happens frequently and it's a big problem. In facilities defense, it's hard to tell what's waste and what's not in some of those labs.

Another thing that we noticed during our stroll through the labs is that some of the researchers need to be educated on some basic lab practices, such as what qualifies as bio-hazard waste and belongs in the red bags vs what is not and can be placed in the normal trash bags. Some other lessons would be about cleaning up your workspace and what should be stored in a fume hood. I find it amazing that some of the scientists don't know these things. To help them learn, Kathleen and I are going to make posters with big text and whimsical pictures to help illustrate the point. I think this is going to be a fun project.

I made great progress this week on the hunt for SDS's aswell. I think I only have about 25 chemicals left that I need to find information on before I officially declare that part of the project done. We'll see what happens though with all these other projects coming up. If I get to spend more time in the labs next week conducting interviews and doing inspections it might not get done for another week. I personally just want to get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I have for y'all this week. Till next time.