#synthesis lab

Historically it was made from murex snails and was hugely expensive and used by royalty, but chemically it’s similar to indigo so the class was able to create it in the lab without snails.

From what I can tell through a bit of detective work, the chemicals have not been properly checked for at least a DECADE.

I wish I was making this up. I was hired to fix things and I'm trying, but today scared the crap out of me.

I found in no particular order:

- Hydrofluoric acid. Improperly marked and stored for ?? Years and unknown percent solution. It had turned green. We do not own the antidote.

- 5L 40% hydrogen peroxide. Unknown age but guessing at least 10 years. I had to open it to ensure no pressure built up 🙃

- a cabinet full of solvents that have been there for a minimum of 8 years. Includes at least 2 peroxide forming liquids and it's unclear whether they are stabilised.

For those who don't do chemistry these 3 are respectively: death upon skin contact, explosive risk and bad explosive risk with cancer bonus.

The reality is that I am super lax with them, because I frankly don't give a fuck if they don't bother to put on a lab coat when all they have to do is check data on a machine in the lab. That is, simply put, not going to kill them.

But I would please, oh so very please, cherry on a top like them to mark all their samples and solutions with labels. And hence, they believe I am "strict" when really, it's because I've found so, so many unidentifiable bottles with mystery liquid. Something that can actually kill us.

I finally got some ✨new lab coats✨ for the lab. Took 3 months to get them because of course the ordering system was all fucked.

But I learned some... concerning... facts in the process.

We had no lab coats in the smallest size, and the majority were L, XL or bigger. Our lab is mostly petite women 🙃 So first problem: everyone were wearing way too large coats. Annoying at best, a risk for getting your sleeves contaminated and tipping stuff over at worst. Or so I thought.

Then in the process of ordering new ones I had to talk with the company that washes them. They register each coat and how often it's been sent to wash.

Y'all. Some of these coats hadn't been washed for 8 YEARS ☠️☠️☠️

In an organic synthesis lab.

Shiiiit, you might be more safe not putting it on at that point. Who knows how much it's contaminated with.

A side effect of not having the right sizes meant that people kept the few they could find hidden, and made sure not to lose it in the washing system.

Buddy, I don't think you belong here.

This blog is purely for me to have a space to write down all the absolutely insane shit I have to deal with as a lone lab tech in a uni research synthesis lab with ~40 ish people.

There was no lab tech before I arrived 2 years ago, things were just supposed to sort themselves out through the magic of good work ethics (???) and non-systematic communication (ie science version of hopes and prayers).

My boss some-fucking-how acquired some sketchy as shit human samples from the nearby hospital.

To be very clear: I do not work in a hospital, nor do I work in a lab that should ever have anything human that isn't attached to a living being. It's a chemical synthesis/analytics lab for gods sake.

And yet! Here we are. Came back from a 3 hour meeting where I amongst other things learned that our chemistry department had not had an official fire drill in +5 years and that 3 people had managed to electrocute themselves on the same thing, because number 1 didn't tell anyone it happened, number 2 was the consequence of number 1's stupid and number 3 was an idiot who wanted to check if the same thing would happen to him if he touched it too.

Y'all I was already fed up. And then I see both of our researchers standing outside my office looking stressed with a box.

R1: Where can I put these samples? They need to be in a freezer? Me: Not possible, our freezer just broke down we have literally zero space (another story in itself). What is it? R1: Human tissue samples. Me:... what. R1: Yes, do you want to see *starts opening box* Me: NO! stop, stop stop. R2: I don't think we're allowed to have that here... Pretty sure this is how we get in the news. R1: So where can I put them?

I don't think I can accurately describe where my brain went at this point. The level of what the fuck was simply too high. Turns out these samples had been standing around in an office for a few hours in a flamingo box with some ice. When told we had no available freezer space she tried to put them in my office instead. No documentation, no notes. No instructions on how we should store it. Could not confirm whether it was all human or some was pig, but there was definitely human in there.

The boss' boss was abroad on conference and when she finally answered it was basically "tee hee oopsie daisy, forgot to check rules about having human bits in a non-bio lab. Will get approval for that real quick".

Ma'am. There is no way in hell we will get any sort of approval for this. We do not have the training, the right security, nor the equipment.

"Ah oh well, we will figure something out."

Other lower level boss: "Can't we just treat it like a schnitzel?"

NO WE CANNOT TREAT THE BITS AND PIECES OF A HUMAN LIKE A *@#* SCHNITZEL!!

It has a looot of blank fields in the safety info because it's so uncommon that it literally hasn't even been fully tested yet.

So we would have an explosive chemical standing around on a shelf and I'll have to pray that no idiot moves it around and looses it to the void that exists in all in uni labs (It might also be illegal for us to own/store, but since it's so uncommon we can't actually find any info on the specifics for this one?).

Can't have that, and I can't send something explosive off to disposal, so I'll have to neutralize it before transport. And while this is probably not super difficult I just... don't want to.

Why would you do this to me dude. Can you not just do some other science? Pretty please. I am lazy and like to keep my blood pressure at a reasonable level.

Not to mention the paperwork. I am currently trying to persuade him to do something else. Anything else really. Pick something that can give us cancer instead, it's frankly easier to deal with. Just not the super cancer ones. They're a bitch to work with too and we've run out of the fancy cancer stickers again.