industry safe solvents....

[mashtikar]

Hey,

I am a phd student at a University and I was wondering which organic modifiers are generally considered safe in the industry? Are there any guidelines?

I recently developed a method for analyzing some phospholipids which had chloroform in it and the company we are working for made a big deal out of it. I am just wondering if there is a safe list for the organic modifiers? So I dont make the same mistake again...

Thanks

Mukul

[tom jupille]

It all depends on how paranoid they want to be. You have to take appropriate safety precautions for *any* solvent.

Many labs use mixtures of dihydrogen monoxide and methyl cyanide without problems.

[Consumer Products Guy]

Many labs use mixtures of dihydrogen monoxide and methyl cyanide without problems.

Haven't people drowned in that dihydrogen monoxide stuff?

[tom jupille]

Haven't people drowned in that dihydrogen monoxide stuff?

Yes, and it is also a major component of acid rain!

On a more serious note, though, what I wanted to point out is that companies can overreact to perceived hazards. Yes, chloroform is hazardous, but for years it was a common ingredient in toothpaste.

[DSP007]

Good afternoon.
Yes, everything is dangerous, about dihydrogen monoxide already mentioned.

Must take into account the real danger in advance to expect efforts to be taken to eliminate it. there was not local Fukushima .

Regarding the question about the use of chloroform. Good solvent, non-flammable and not very toxic, in technology and medicine has been used for a 150 years .
Though it is necessary to take into account that he was like all the organochlorine low molecular weight alkanes substances to have problems with liver toxicity and stable in nature, therefore, breathe it and pour it down the sink should not be.

I understand, you not made manufacting extraction, but a purely analytical method? In this case, organizing the collection of its waste and utilisate with organizations involved in disposing of such substances in your region.

[lmh]

In many cases it's what you do with a chemical, rather than the chemical itself, that determines the hazard. That dihydrogen oxide stuff is a case in point: water has been a major cause of more industrial accidents than any other chemical, but many of its accidents result from the extreme danger of large amounts of steam under pressure. It is also quite reactive stuff, but it takes two to make a reaction (usually).

During my career I've had difficulties with methanol, and more recently I've had a situation where I had to argue for some weeks before it was accepted that I could dispose of up to 1 L of 0.1% formic acid in water down the conventional lab drain. Even less logically (considering the vinegar-consumption of our organisation's cafeteria), 1L of 1% acetic acid in water was considered a hazard that could not go down the drain. The arguments were that it might influence the overall pH of the waste from the entire building (800 employees...), and it would unacceptably increase the total organic content of the waste.

There's a strange psychology about this. Many, many years ago, now, I remember doing a lot of work with 14C. At the time, local regulations were to dispose of aqueous 14C down a specially-designated sink, which led to conventional drains, but records were kept of how much went down there, and someone calculated the dilutions. Meanwhile, we used triton-toluene based scintillation fluid, which is hardly environmentally friendly. We changed to an ecologically more acceptable fluid, that (according to its manufacturers) could be disposed of in normal sink waste. This was banned, flatly, by the local water authority. We could dispose of this scintillant down the sink if it hadn't been mixed with radioactivity, and we could dispose of radioactivity down the sink, but we couldn't dispose of used scintillant down the sink because it had been mixed with radioactivity. Go figure. The critical panic-inducer was, of course, "radioactive material", but whoever took the decision about scintillant was blissfully ignoring the fact that we were already putting 98% of our 14C down their drain anyway. I'm grateful not to work in that field any more.

[mashtikar]

Thanks for all the comments!

I was under an impression that there might be some solid guidelines as to how to dispose off all the organic solvents, but it seems thats not the case...

What about the QC labs then? Dont they allowed to use chloroform, methanol etc for mobile phases in liquid chromatography?

Mukul

[lmh]

there will be solid regulations, but they vary enormously from place to place. You must follow local rules.

[HW Mueller]

Of course there are guidlines for these things, in Germany you have thick books telling the details. Then there are the safety data sheets that industry has to provide (MSDS).
Generally, one can use any chemical if the facilities are there, and the personal knowhow exists.