DCHAS-L Discussion List Archive

I am at a small college and trying to give good advice to researchers
about when work needs to be done in the hood.  The chemicals we work
with typically have PEL or similar values listed on the MSDS but, of
course, I have no meter to measure those levels in the lab.  Lacking
such hard data, is there any reasonable standard I can offer bench
chemists to help them decide when work needs to move to the hood?  I
currently have researchers doing column chromatography with hexanes and
ethyl acetate on the bench outside the hood.  When I express concerns,
the response starts "when I was in grad school, we did it this way . .
."  I did lots of things in grad school that I couldn't defend then, let
alone now.  Without the ability to measure (or estimate?) levels, I
can't do much to change behavior.

Thanks,
Gail