Gas Chromatography

[Cyclohexane2014]

how much salary Chromatographicts? And where are you live...?

[Consumer Products Guy]

There's a huge chasm between someone who knows how to manually inject and push start, and someone who knows how to develop and validate a method from scratch based upon the structure of the sought-for analyte.

Same for HPLC.

Sometimes chromatography is not the way to solve a problem: sometimes FTIR, sometimes visual, sometimes solubility.....

[kubowicz.tomasz]

Sometimes chromatography is not the way to solve a problem: sometimes FTIR, sometimes visual, sometimes solubility.....

sometimes it is...knowledge, expierence and "no fear" to ask people who know the stuff

[James_Ball]

how much salary Chromatographicts? And where are you live...?

Depends on the type of business. Are you looking at Research and Development, Pharmaceutical, or Environmental?

Environmental is probably the lowest paid, and can range from low $20k per year to just below $100k per year depending on region of the country(USA), years of experience and how the market is in those places and how much the local and state government require certification. In an area where certification is not required(our state is implementing it this year so pricing will be changing) anyone with an instrument in their basement can run analysis legally and charge so little it makes it difficult for labs to compete.

[MichaelVW]

James,

I'm curious about the certification requirements you mentioned - do you have a name of the rule/law/program I could google?

Kinda wonder how that will work near state boarders. Maybe organized crime will get involved and there will be data bootleggers :p

[Steve Reimer]

Certification for environmental analysis depends upon the data use. Drinking water and wastewater progams have delegated much of the final authority to states but the primary driver is EPA and the requirement for compliance monitoring.
Other certification can be found under TNI (formerly NELAP). http://www.nelac-institute.org/

[James_Ball]

James,

I'm curious about the certification requirements you mentioned - do you have a name of the rule/law/program I could google?

Kinda wonder how that will work near state boarders. Maybe organized crime will get involved and there will be data bootleggers :p

As Steve mentioned, most of the certification is handled by State governments in the US, or the EU in Europe. If you are doing Food type analysis it is normally handled under FDA(US) or ISO(international).

Our lab has to hold certification in multiple states here because we run samples across borders. Now that we own a lab in another state, we also have to make sure that we keep a record of where samples are taken and by which lab so that taxes are paid to the state in which the work is done. It really becomes a headache for our office people.

Until this year our state did not require certification for waste water, and anyone who wanted to open a lab could submit data for waste water analysis. Now to submit data you must have been approved by the certification board of the state, which means labs have to be running everything the same way and participating in audits and analyzing blind Performance Evaluation samples twice a year. This does increase the cost across the board but allows us to charge more for the work.