Recently I have finally seperated our chemicals into DG classes .....yeah , I know , but my predecessor said it made it too hard to find anything unless they were all in alphabetic order .
So , now I have a piles of chemicals in each group and I have purchased about 80 plastic tubs to put them in . But I was wondering do you have groups of say , all Non-hazardous Chlorides in one tub and Sulfates in another , or do you have say , all the Potassiums in one and Iron in another ?
I need to do the same with my current one but my last place I just had alphabetical within the groups. They were separated by shelves and dividers for the dry chemicals so I didn't have them in tubs at all.
For the diluted droppers and stock solutions I had them separated into acids/bases/indicators and I think the rest were just alphabetical because at low dilutions it doesn't matter so much about the DG class (unless that has changed?).
You're right, Rosalie. The segregation applies to hazardous chemicals, so dilute solutions have no real rules apart from common WHS principles. Check the labelling on Riskassess which will clearly show what is hazardous or non-H.
Bigmack - yep, following DG classes is the best way to go with chemical storage as it accounts for incompatibilities. Within my non-regulated chemicals, I just have them in alphabetical order on the shelves. Not stored in tubs. Always store solids above liquids. You can put them anyway that works for you and there is no need to segregate chlorides from sulfates and so on.
We also had them in class's then A-Z. So as Merilyn said we also did NOT segreate chlorides from sulfates. Our chem store only had unopened chemicals, the open ones where stored in the same way but in the prep room. Gee hope that makes sense.
Regards Labbie
Lab Manager/Lab Tech, mind reading etc etc
Now retired
OK , thanks .
I'll probably just Alphabetically store them then .
The Tubs probably aren't essential , but after finding so many cracked glass jars recently and contents that had ended up on the wooden shelves , I thought I'd just do it as a precaution . And I can Dymo Label each Tub with contents to help location maybe .
Certainly a label on the tub sounds good. If you want to get fancy pants - in Bunnings I saw QR code labels that you stick on boxes when packing which then link to a list of contents. Pretty sure you would find free QR code generators on the web, too.
We have our DG stuff all in cabinets and not really stored in Alphabetical order....I have discarded so much and only keep what I really need , my aim is to be able to do a stock take by opening the doors and standing there...no touching of chemicals is needed. I have all in trays/containers (bunds), labelled with DG sticker and GHS.
For the non DG stuff and class 9, solids on top shelf in alphabetical order, solutions on next shelf in alphabetical order and all stored in bunds. Diluted working solutions and class sets under that and all in bunds in alphabetical order so we can find them. All our bunds are labelled and have GHS stickers on them. When we put out class sets we don't put out their storage bund.... that way we know when we see empty containers in the chemstore something is out and in use.
No stacking, no having 3 trays deep on a shelf business. If I can't stock take by standing there lookin at them (no touching) I think we have to much and something has to go.
I spent 1 month during the epic lockdowns in 2020 with another labtech doing our chemstore... OMG it is so good now.
Hearing you Anna. I have the luxury of a good sized chem store so have been able to have each chemical faced up (a retail term) so no chemicals hiding behind others unless they are a new container.
The other thing that helped was to put my chemical stocktake onto a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet matches the physical layout for each chemical class. The Chemwatch manifest that I adopted was horrible.
Having the chemicals neatly organised and a stocktake that is easy to follow makes it a very quick job.
Luckily I inherited a lab with all the chemicals stored in their DG groups, and in the old days in Vic, colour coded- (coloured stickers on each container), it was compulsory. I keep all the chemicals even diluted ones, (in class sets in little containers), in their category in alphabetical order.
