Its been four weeks since I stepped into the pungent environs that would be my third home for the next twelve months ( as thrashed out strictly on day one: six days a week, 9 to 6, even if I have no work and yes, no holidays come what may...). I guess its time I put down my thoughts about the days I have spent in my laboratory. Apart from busying myself with a few chemical reactions and some reading, I have spent some time thinking about how real-life science is full of ironies. Here, I attempt to give shape to one of them, without any offence to anyone.
Science, as is claimed by its champions, is only for the good of life. But in their journey to the altar of truth, we chemists don't mind pumping huge amounts of noxious, deadly chemicals outside our labs (a nearby drain, an open pit or best - the lab next door!). And even if some do, they brush it aside as another of those trivial matters that obstruct one's path to scientific glory. Emptying hexane and acetone is, well,just part of the rigmarole that occurs round the clock in laboratories around the world. And benzene... aah! we love washing our hands with it while setting off on our chemical odysseys. No wincing muscles, no raised eyebrows, no concern, as the concentration of hydrocarbons rises to alarming levels in the air and water around us.
Water - more critical to the origin and propagation of life than any other natural resource, freely flows in and out of our taps. flushing out chemicals dumped into the sink. Another senseless practise that endangers the lives of millions (including the people working in the lab themselves!). Why can't we keep separate bottles for the common solvents used and thrown, and then extract them by simple physical methods known to us for decades? This is a potentially profitable job,on environmental and financial fronts , and should be explored. Imagine making money out of discarded chemicals! Chemical waste treatment is either ignored or left to the city municipalities, who generally have no technical expertise in this area. As a result, chemicals are accumulating in air, water and on land, ready to strike at all forms of life on earth. If things carry on the way they have till now, deaths due to excessive concentrations of chemicals inside our bodies will be commonplace.
Research in chemistry will never stop, and from what I have seen and experienced, disposal of chemicals can, at best, be reduced and monitored. This leaves us with isolation, treatment and extraction of chemicals from waste products as promising areas to address the issue of chemical imbalance in our environment and bring the levels of chemicals in nature to acceptable levels. As chemists and responsible humans, let us act effectively to this end.
Science, as is claimed by its champions, is only for the good of life. But in their journey to the altar of truth, we chemists don't mind pumping huge amounts of noxious, deadly chemicals outside our labs (a nearby drain, an open pit or best - the lab next door!). And even if some do, they brush it aside as another of those trivial matters that obstruct one's path to scientific glory. Emptying hexane and acetone is, well,just part of the rigmarole that occurs round the clock in laboratories around the world. And benzene... aah! we love washing our hands with it while setting off on our chemical odysseys. No wincing muscles, no raised eyebrows, no concern, as the concentration of hydrocarbons rises to alarming levels in the air and water around us.
Water - more critical to the origin and propagation of life than any other natural resource, freely flows in and out of our taps. flushing out chemicals dumped into the sink. Another senseless practise that endangers the lives of millions (including the people working in the lab themselves!). Why can't we keep separate bottles for the common solvents used and thrown, and then extract them by simple physical methods known to us for decades? This is a potentially profitable job,on environmental and financial fronts , and should be explored. Imagine making money out of discarded chemicals! Chemical waste treatment is either ignored or left to the city municipalities, who generally have no technical expertise in this area. As a result, chemicals are accumulating in air, water and on land, ready to strike at all forms of life on earth. If things carry on the way they have till now, deaths due to excessive concentrations of chemicals inside our bodies will be commonplace.
Research in chemistry will never stop, and from what I have seen and experienced, disposal of chemicals can, at best, be reduced and monitored. This leaves us with isolation, treatment and extraction of chemicals from waste products as promising areas to address the issue of chemical imbalance in our environment and bring the levels of chemicals in nature to acceptable levels. As chemists and responsible humans, let us act effectively to this end.
5 comments:
nice read.
good point. reminds me of TPRs lab. Wash with acetone. drain in bottle. distill again. It was pretty cool.
it is a real concern...we do have rules in tifr and in purdue not to throw certain things down the drain, and to properly dispose them off in biohazard bins...and most of us do follow them...but ur point of reusing solvents is a good one, if one does not need extremely pure solvents...otherwise contamination can spoil experiments...
in bio-labs we continuously use and discard plastic pipet-tips, which i think can be reused after cleaning and autoclaving...
I read a piece in a local newspaper about the biggest e-waste scrapyard in Delhi at Seelampur. Its a huge industry out there and the guys make pretty decent profits out of it.
In Cambridge, we have a plant, where we try to distill used solvents. So we carefully discard solvents into various bottles. The waste disposal is of high concern and in our lab records, where we write the procedure and results, we are required to write the method of waste disposal as well. There is an entire part of the department devoted to waste disposal.Not just solvents but also glasswares, plastics, paper,cotton are also disposed separately and reused. But the point is, reuse of solvents after a certain stage can be more expensive than buying new ones. Waste disposal is expensive and so in India, we are still behind at it.
Nice read Ranga... keep writing :)
Good to read :) Reminds me of one the Oxygen articles over which there was this huge fight :D haha. The thing is, optimistic as we might try to be, instigating any serious concerns about this in India is very, very hard.
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