Labwork I have done in my first month as a PhD student

[kaberett]

(1) Learned to wash beakers
(2) Washed most (but not all) of my own personal beakers
(3) Been trained to use HF

...

One of these things is not like the others.

Also "learned to top up the acid stills", but that sounds like a bigger deal than it actually is so I'm leaving it off. ;)

Comments

[sorrillia]

Congratulations, or possibly condolences, on being trained on HF.

[fyreharper]

For the uninitiated - what is HF?

[sorrillia]

"Terrifying"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid

It has the particularly unpleasant property that it doesn't produce a burning sensation if it gets on your skin, but a few hours later it starts dissolving your bones, and the fatal dose for skin contact is fairly low.

[kaberett]

Actually, this is why dilute is more dangerous than concentrated, because concentrated you do feel if you get it on you.

[sidheag]

Enquiring minds here want to know: what do you use HF for (my offering "cleaning stuff off stuff" satisfied nobody!)

[fyreharper]

Aha, yes, "terrifying" is a good description! I've mostly only heard about HF from my mom's stories about working in an assay lab ("does this chunk of rock have gold in it? no? how about this one? LET US SEND YOU MORE ROCKS IN OUR HOPEFULNESS" "nope, LOTS of arsenic in this sample though... no, seriously, lots"), so I didn't recognise the abbreviation.

[kaberett]

Digesting rocks!

Also known as dissolving them. They're really reluctant to, y'see, so apparently we end up using a 3:1 mix of conc HF + conc HNO3...

(Washing beakers is a three-stage process involving acids. That's probably also of interest to at least some of them. ;)

[sidheag]

Thanks!

DH wants to know (he's not with me...): do they just tell you "no, seriously, you should be scared of this stuff" or do they also show you hideous photos of people who weren't?

[kaberett]

Julie (my supervisor) very explicitly (as in, I am paraphrasing her not very much) takes the attitude that she has been HF safety officer for labs in three different countries, and has never had an accident, and hasn't even had incidents with people she personally trained. (She has taken people to hospital a couple of times, but that apparently was because they were clearly okay on the HF front but having a panic attack...)

She also says she's not at all interested in showing people horrifying photographs, because scaring them just makes them more likely to have shaky hands thereby increasing the risk of an accident. So what she actually did was:
- have me read through the safety docs, then ask me questions on them
- explain about diluted HF being more dangerous than concentrated HF (you're less likely to notice the spill immediately on skin contact), and how to watch for & deal with spills
- talk me through how to double-glove (vinyl over nitrile; don't bother with double-nitrile; occasionally triple-glove, with two layers of vinyl over nitrile)
- demonstrate what droplets look like on vinyl gloves, given that I'm unfamiliar with using them (she used water to demonstrate, which has a higher surface tension, but is still useful because I always default to nitrile not vinyl for everyday use, and vinyl gloves are much shinier)
- talk me through fetching the HF from the other lab, including how it ought to have had (1) a pH indicator strip in the outer enclosure but didn't, and (2) how it ought to have had Parafilm around the cap but ditto
- ... and then show me the minutiae of how to handle it once open (short version: never leave a container with HF in open for any longer than you can help, ESPECIALLY not large volumes; check your gloves and the containers between every step for any drops of HF; always have a large beaker of water in the hood for dilution)

... all interspersed with conversation about how to handle spills if they happen, including but not limited to the important point of: if you are applying calcium gluconate to someone, put vinyl gloves on before touching the affected part of their body. Because rubbing in the HF antidote WITH BARE HANDS is NOT HELPING ANYONE.

She was very clear that it's not helpful to be scared of it. Treat it with healthy respect, sure, but active terror is something she thinks is... not helpful.

At this stage I am almost more scared of what she'll do if I break her 15-year streak than of the stuff itself ;)

[sidheag]

Sounds very sensible, and I hope you don't break her streak!

[sorrillia]

You guys use vinyl gloves for it? Interesting; no one in our department uses those, so they just tell us double nitrile, and if you want to be extra paranoid, a pair of non-disposable neoprene gloves over those.

[kaberett]

Julie sez no point in double nitrile, it'll just go straight through.

[hilarita]

Yay for training!

[fyreharper]

(of course, having read All The Pern Books I Could Get My Hands On as a youngling, HNO3 is permanently filed in my brain as "that thing with which you kill the Thread that gets past the dragons"... ;p)

[calissa]

Reading this entry and the comments that follow has been such an education :D

[crazyscot]

*phear*

(You do read In The Pipeline, don't you? The "Things I Won't Work With" tag, in particular?)

[liv]

Thank you for this wonderful description. I actually had (mild) nightmares about being in a geochem lab and not being sure whether I'd splashed a tiny bit of HF on my skin, as a result of this thread.

[chiasmata]

Your supervisor sounds brill.

[kaberett]

She's proper amazing!

[bjh21.me.uk]

That was my immediate thought. And of course the series starts with HF (http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2004/03/03/things_i_wont_touch_1.php). Not hydrofluoric acid, mind, but hydrogen fluoride gas.

[kaberett]

There's a reason we work in the flow hoods and keep everything open for the minimum possible length of time ;)

[kaberett]

Yep :-)