Hmmm..only 2,100 items..we have some individual rooms that have about that many items in them!

 

Does your excel spreadsheet have the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) number associated with each chemical? I assume you are familiar with CAS numbers but if not:

http://www.cas.org/content/chemical-substances/faqs#q1

 

Note that for some bizarre reason, MS excel wants to do a mathematical operation on certain CAS numbers and automatically turns them into dates.  The only way to prevent it is to manually put brackets [ ], or something around the CAS number in each individual cell so it does not treat it like a number.  Yes I tried re-formatting the cell types to a non-number, it doesn’t help.

 

If your inventory has CAS numbers with the chemicals, then you could copy and paste the CAS numbers into a “find” search box on the web page below.  You’d have to look one-by-one.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2012-title40-vol27/xml/CFR-2012-title40-vol27-sec261-33.xml

 

Are you trying to identify every single individual container (for future waste disposal labeling), or just which chemical names are on the EPA lists?  My guess is that of your 2,100 items there will be duplicate chemicals (depends how you recorded your inventory).  If you don’t need every container identified, you could try to remove duplicate chemical names using excel which might shorten the list of chemicals (CAS numbers) you need to search.

 

If your excel inventory not have CAS numbers associated with each item, then you may need to spend the time looking each one up and adding the information.

 

FYI – we use inventory software that identifies the RCRA-P listed items and we place a special sticker on the container on those items.

 

Good luck!

 

Luis P. Barthel-Rosa, Ph.D.

Manager, Chemical Management Services

Environmental Health and Safety Department

University of Nevada, Reno

 

775-327-2270 office

luisbr**At_Symbol_Here**unr.edu

http://www.ehs.unr.edu/chemicalinventory.html

 

 

From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU] On Behalf Of Allen Niemi
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 1:35 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Identifying P-list and U-list materials