From: Ralph Froehlich <rfroehlich**At_Symbol_Here**HELIXENV.COM>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] What's in the bottle?
Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 13:39:44 -0400
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU>
Message-ID: 0C671918-DC8E-4834-920F-041FD3756706**At_Symbol_Here**helixenv.com
In-Reply-To


Jennifer:


I assume that you are trying to dispose of the bottle contents as waste, rather than trying to identify the contents for archival or research. With that goal, you really need to determine whether the contents of each bottle are hazardous under the RCRA regulations. Review the RCRA hazardous waste regulations with your facility's EHS staff if you don't have any luck with internal searches. Basically, you may need to document that the contents are not Reactive, Corrosive, Ignitable or Toxic by TCLP. Environmental labs can assist you with these determinations (not free). If you are fortunate, none of them will be hazardous waste.

If so, then lab packing them as hazardous waste for your hazardous waste transporter/disposal contractor should ensure that they do not become an environmental liability.

Ralph A. Froehlich, CIH, CSP, QEP
Helix Environmental, Inc.
(937) 776-8435 cell



On May 27, 2021, at 12:01 PM, Jennifer Gile <jen.gile**At_Symbol_Here**GMAIL.COM> wrote:

All,

Now that the strangest academic year in my experience has come to a close, I'm keeping busy doing a bit of housekeeping.  I found a box of bottles on a shelf last week, only to find the bottles in the box are all filled with research results. Few were labeled.

The faculty member that made these is no longer with the university and left some time ago.  They had a wide range of research interests (hormones to organometallics) which complicates matters.

My question for each of you today: how do you go about identifying unknowns? 

I'm working with folks on campus to see if there's any digital footprint of what these may be, in the meantime I would like to figure out what these are. Please save conversations of housekeeping, record keeping, and best practices for a different thread, with respect, that ship did sail. I think these are all very important topics; at the moment I'm interested in getting these bottles identified and packaged for disposal.

My thanks in advance!
Jennifer.
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