Thursday, April 17, 2008

For those of you who work in or around labs (either as a scientist or teaching): if you have polyethylene carboys, check them.

We had an old one (probably ~10 years old) that we had been storing DI water in (so we didn't have to run down to the taps - which, OH SO HELPFULLY have only been placed in the teaching labs - every day when we're doing research). It had not been used/ moved for a while, so while setting up my experiment (which is all done now, saints be praised*), I moved the thing to a place that would be more convenient for me to use it. Set it down gently. Heard, "crackle, crackle" and wondered, "What on earth could that be?"

Just as my mind was forming the word "earth" of "what on earth could that be?", the whole thing gave way - the back end of it just split and cracked all over the place.

And I was covered with water. As was the floor, the cabinet, the cabinet behind me, some old journals a colleague had stolen some of my bench space to store been storing on that side of the lab.

So I had to stop and mop it all up which believe me did NOT make me happy.

And then go down and order a new carboy - this time, NOT PE plastic.


(* is it OK for a non-Catholic to say that?)

2 comments:

Christa said...

I had the same thing happen with a full PE bottle of a 10% sodium hydroxide solution stored in a above bench shelf when I was in graduate school. My benchmate had recently refilled it and I was taking it down to clean the shelves during lab clean up day and it poured all over everything, including into a drawer. Not fun.

dragon knitter said...

PE plastic? is that that stuff that they've been doing warnings about?

as for the saying? i had a catholic friend who said "mary, joseph & jesus!" on a regular basis, and i picked up the habit for a while (and i'm a tree lover, lol)