Hazardous waste disposal

Shocked to find kerosene stored in a coffee can.

Spent part of today cleaning out the last of the flammable cabinets and preparing another collection for our Environmental Health and Safety staff. To my dismay, I found several glass jars full of gasoline that had been missed on the first pass through the cabinet. I knew there were about 5 gas cans full of unleaded in this cabinet, along with two full propane cylinders, and wow-ee, we found a coffee can half full of kerosene! Yes, that marker actually kind of says kerosene on the lid. This helps to explain why the cabinet smelled so damn bad.

In keeping with UT and lab policy for Hazardous Chemical Waste disposal, I decanted the compatible fuels into a 20L Nalgene carboy that was tagged with an EHS Waste Disposal label with my name, UTID number, lab contact, building and room number, and full chemical description. You'll notice from the photos that this was done wearing PPE and working in the vent hood. All of the gas was discolored, varying from straw, to red, to brown, and had probably been bad for 10 years or more. The kerosene coffee can had begun to rust through and was leaking a bit. After draining the containers, they were left in the fume hood to vent for a while, and then closed up and replaced in the flammable cabinet. The next step in the process is filling out the Request for Chemical Disposal and faxing it over to EHS and scheduling a day for pick up. It has taken an interminably long time to get through all of this material, I've made several attempts at it over the last two years, and have sent off about 350 containers of expired, redundant, or dangerous materials for proper disposal (no, we don't pour it down the sink!) This last pickup should be the last for quite some time.

I'm melting... I'm melting. What a world, what a world...

Freeing these bottles and buckets from the bottom of the box was a bugger

This bottle of Starbond cyanoacrylate adhesive makes a succinct case for buying materials in only the quantities that you can use before they expire/self destruct. The resin has eaten through the bottom of the bottle, and the cyanoacrylate was blooming all over the surface, and smelled horrible. While initially it may seem more cost effective to buy materials in quantity, they often expire well before they can be entirely used up. Finding this bottle on the back of a shelf drives home the potential hazards of improper storage, another bottle had already leaked in a cardboard box being prepared for EHS retrieval and adhered the rest of the containers in the box to the bottom.

4th FPCS Proceedings PDF available

(I've successfully made two days of posts in a row! This is a promising start!)
Many thanks to Arvid Aase at Fossil Butte National Monument for both hosting the wildly successful 2011 Fossil Preparation and Collections and editing, along with Tyra Olstad, the Proceedings, which are now available for free download! This handy reference includes all of the abstracts from the meeting, a couple of extended abstracts, and four papers on paleo methods. Thanks again to Tyra, Arvid, and everyone who contributed!


 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 4th FOSSIL PREPARATION & COLLECTIONS SYMPOSIUM, APRIL 2011
                                                  BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
                                                            GEOLOGY STUDIES
                                                              Volume 49(B), 2011

                             ABSTRACTS for WORKSHOPS and ORAL PRESENTATIONS
                                                              * also an article
* Now what did the paleontologist find? Adjustable exhibits for a changing world.
Arvid K. Aase........................................................................................................................................ 1
An infinitely-adjustable work stage for precision preparation of microfossils under high magnification.
Gregory W. Brown............................................................................................................................... 1
Exercising judgment in the paleontology laboratory.
Matthew A. Brown............................................................................................................................... 2
* Vacuum molding and casting for bubble free fossil replicas.
Jennifer L. Cavin................................................................................................................................... 2
* Acid preparation of the gill skeleton of fossil fishes.
Robert L. Evander................................................................................................................................ 3
* Continued Improvements in the use of archival materials for the padded plaster jacket.
William Keyser, Peter Kroehler, and Steven Jabo............................................................................. 3
Testing the effectiveness of two commonly used consolidants in palaeontological preparation.
Jim McCababe and Rhian Russel............................................................................................................. 6
Cost effective assembly and operation of equipment to make excellent casts.
Peter Reser........................................................................................................................................... 6
Putting a fine point on it...advanced pin vise preparation techniques: materials and methods.
Connie Van Beek............................................................................................................................. 7–10
POSTER PRESENTATIONS
Soft tissue preparation in mosasaurs from the Smoky Hill Chalk.
Anthony E. Maltese......................................................................................................................... 4–5
Cut and punch: Use of a center-punch to isolate and remove small specimens from hard sediments.
William R. Wahl................................................................................................................................ 11
ARTICLES
Now what did the paleontologist find? Adjustable exhibits for a changing world.
Arvid K. Aase.......................................................................................................................................12
Vacuum molding and casting for bubble free fossil replicas.
Jennifer L. Cavin..................................................................................................................................24
Acid preparation of the gill skeleton of fossil fishes.
Robert L. Evander...............................................................................................................................29
Continued improvements in the use of archival materials for the padded plaster jacket.
William Keyser, Peter Kroehler, and Steven Jabo............................................................................33

I'm coming back, plus Jack Horner

All right, after a more or less sixth month absence I've finally succumbed to the pressure to reinvigorate this blog. The very last thing I've got time for. I just turned 30 last week, so I'm renewing some resolutions, eating better, working out more regularly, trying to get at least 6 hours of sleep a night, maintaining an abandoned web log... In order to make sure this happens, I'm going to promise to commit to at least 7 solid days of blog posts. This first one is a softball, as I'm coasting on the name recognition of both Horner and the fabulous TED Talks series.... however, this was brought to my attention by one of my rare, non-paleo friends, for the first time she brought a paleo news item to my attention that I hadn't already known about 10 years earlier!

I include this because it is an interesting talk, but also because of the MOBILE Molecular Paleontology Field Station at 8:44!!! How has this awesome thing escaped my radar?

HELL YEAH!!!!

What could rouse this sleeping blog from the depths of busyness slumber? Nothing less than a Nazi Dinosaur 1st person shooter! Hopefully work will ease up sometime soon and allow for a post with actual content....

Know your labs....

Effective communication is key...

to good lab management. This note says it all.

 

 "Because it is a pain in the ass to sort through 15,000 samples, twice, to find the six tubes that should have been left in my rack in the first place!"

Opensource Solvent Gels in paleo

[Stupid, stupid, open access is what I meant, not open source. That's what happens with late night blog posting.]

I'd like to thank Randy Irmis for forwarding this paper to me last week, recently published in Palaeontologia Electronica. The technique described is a very interesting addition to the paleontology toolbox, and I look forward to experimenting with these materials soon. This is also an excellent example of a well-written methods paper, that clearly examines considerations for using these materials and also serves as a great example for preparators who might be looking for inspiration to publish their own take on techniques or tools (and a recommendation to look towards PE as a publishing venue). I'd be very interested to hear results if anyone else has used solvent gels or gives it a shot after reading!

When you peruse this paper, take special note of the attention paid to worker and specimen safety concerns. One part I particularly like is discussion about using judgment to determine whether or not attempts at reversing a treatment will cause more damage than it will undo. Also take a look at Figure 4.5 highlighting airscribe damage to the tooth surface.

Williams, Vincent S, Doyle, Adrian M., 2010. Cleaning Fossil Tooth Surfaces fro Microwear Analysis: Use of Solvent Gels to Remove
Resistant Consolidant. Palaeontologia Electronica Vol. 13, Issue 3; 2T:12p;
http://palaeo-electronica.org/2010_3/247/index.html

ABSTRACT
Fine-scale surface texture analysis of teeth has become increasingly useful for
anthropologists and palaeontologists to infer diet and jaw mechanics in fossil animals.
We describe a fast, non-abrasive and residue free method for the removal of resistant
consolidant from fossil teeth. The method utilises solvent gels, and its use is a significant
improvement over previous techniques, particularly where microwear analysis is
to be performed. The method adapts techniques originally developed by art conservators
for the removal of varnish from oil paintings without damaging the oil paint
beneath. A combination of Carbopol (a water soluble acrylic polymer) and Ethomeen
(a polyoxyethylene cocoamine detergent) allows solvents such as acetone and ethanol
to be suspended in a gel for application to consolidant coated tooth surfaces. Key
advantages are that dissolved consolidant is lifted away from the tooth surface into the
solvent gel and a high degree of control is possible such that small discrete areas can
be cleaned of consolidant. Because the solvents are held within a gel, cleaning of the
tooth surface can be performed without the need for a fume hood.