E-News for March 2000
Greetings ALMA Members,
More on those repetitive motion injuries. If you haven’t addressed this issue in your lab as yet, you might want to take a look at the proposed OSHA ergonomic standards. According to an industry publication, companies will be required to compensate victims of repetitive motion injuries at higher lost time wages than for other injuries under the proposed plan. It sets the threshold at which the company is required to take action at one diagnosed injury. It also allows the OSHA compliance officer significant discretion in deciding if a company has done enough to solve repetitive motion injury problems. As an example of what can be done to address these types of injuries, I received the following e-mail from one of our members:
“On the ergonomics front, that has been our number one item in terms of injuries. The R&D lab has done a full audit of all workstations here and they are now ergonomically correct. There is also a bimonthly checklist system where each workstation is audited to see if there have been any changes. I also have the ergonomic issue in the testing lab. We hired a consultant to come in and review all the testing and make recommendations on changes in the procedure and/or equipment setup. From this report, we prioritized the list and have been making changes to improve the ergonomics. This audit was done four years ago and I still have a team that I meet with every 2-3 weeks to continue improvements in the lab. The ergonomic area is not one where you can make a change and then it is okay, as I am finding out. Each person is different and what might be ergonomically correct for one person, is not correct for another. Hence the continuous improvement team.”
I have mentioned this topic to several of you in the past but thought Id share it again since it can mean real cost savings for some of you. A couple of years ago, my colleagues at DuPont and Arco mentioned that they had switched most of their gas chromatographs to hydrogen carrier gas. I was surprised since I always thought that there were significant safety issues associated with this type of operation. On further investigation, I became more comfortable with the idea and switched the chromatographs in my lab to this type of operation. I purchased a hydrogen generator and a pure air generator for relatively low cost and have managed to nearly eliminate helium usage and pure air cylinders. This has substantially reduced gas costs and, as a secondary benefit, has shortened analysis times. If you can satisfy yourself on the safety aspects, the economic argument for hydrogen carrier gas is strong.
Also related to gas chromatography, one of our members has passed along another cost savings tip for those of you who use electron capture detectors.
He stated that Hewlett-Packard ECDs are usually returned to the vendor to be refurbished by replacing the anode at a substantial cost. He has had good success with third party vendors that are licensed disassemblers who just clean the ECD at a much lower cost. He also found that his Perkin-Elmer Autosystem ECDs could be disassembled and cleaned in-house.
I recently discovered a publication (that has been around for about 100 years) that covers general science and computer topics in a very entertaining manner. MIT publishes a magazine entitled Technology Review that looks at current trends, events, or people in all fields of science and is great for keeping informed on topics outside your specialty. The magazine is written at a level closer to Discover than to Scientific American. If you are interested in keeping up with technology, take a look at it—I think youll enjoy it.
If you have any comments, cost saving suggestions, opinions, etc. let me hear from you .
Wayne