Lab Safety Newsletter Current Edition
May 2021
Properly Dispose of Chemical Waste
At times, research generates chemical waste, including buffers, agars, petri dishes, pipette tips and other materials. To determine if your waste is hazardous, review Appendix E of the Hazardous Waste Disposal Guidelines. Generally, chemical waste should be submitted to Environmental Health and Safety (REM) for pickup through the Hazardous Materials Pickup Request form. If you are generating biological waste or waste that might look to be biologically contaminated, please submit that waste through the Biological Waste program.
Broken Glass Boxes as Hazardous Waste Containers
Broken glass boxes are used across campus to collect chemically-contaminated glassware, which is a hazardous waste. While this is an acceptable practice, the box must remain closed if it is used as a hazardous waste container. This means that the lid needs to be on the box and the perforated flap on the top of the box must remain closed at all times, except when adding or removing waste. An example of an appropriately closed and labeled broken glass box is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The broken glass box in the image above is properly closed.
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