The people finding these things have the same skill sets and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the institutions that do so.
No bench chemist should attempt to cleanup this stuff. Go to your university or company EHS, and if you don;'t have that, your city does. The history of chemistry is filled with responsible and intelligent organic chemists who nonetheless died terrible deaths. EHS has strategies to avoid this.
Humor us all and think another few steps ahead. And what's EHS gonna do?
They're gonna CC the guy who's office is right beside yours because (surprise surprise) the departments and teams who's work results in them having weird nasty stuff buried in the back of the walk in fridge are the same people who know how to handle it.
EHS is just a coordinator. They don't have subject matter in everything. So they contact the experts. If your biology department fridge with Space AIDS(TM) in it it's because your department is the experts so you'll be getting the call.
This is how you wind up spending many, many $ remediating a building. And getting those weird questions like, "Inventory says we have 500ml of X, anyone know where it is?"
> This is how you wind up spending many, many $ remediating a building
Oh yes, and this isn't a new phenomenon, for instance:
"When Cambridge's physicists moved out of the famous Cavendish laboratories
in the mid-1970s, they unintentionally left behind a dangerous legacy: a
building thoroughly contaminated with mercury. Concern about rising levels
of mercury vapour in the air in recent months led university officials to
take urine samples from 43 of the social scientists who now have offices
in the old Cavendish. The results, announced last week, show that some people
have exposure levels comparable to people who work with mercury in industry."[0]
You call your university's EHS department and tell them as much about what you know about the contents of the bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine about the contents, destroy it safely.
The same thing that happens when someone quits.
The people finding these things have the same skill sets and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the institutions that do so.
No bench chemist should attempt to cleanup this stuff. Go to your university or company EHS, and if you don;'t have that, your city does. The history of chemistry is filled with responsible and intelligent organic chemists who nonetheless died terrible deaths. EHS has strategies to avoid this.
Humor us all and think another few steps ahead. And what's EHS gonna do?
They're gonna CC the guy who's office is right beside yours because (surprise surprise) the departments and teams who's work results in them having weird nasty stuff buried in the back of the walk in fridge are the same people who know how to handle it.
EHS is just a coordinator. They don't have subject matter in everything. So they contact the experts. If your biology department fridge with Space AIDS(TM) in it it's because your department is the experts so you'll be getting the call.
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This is how you wind up spending many, many $ remediating a building. And getting those weird questions like, "Inventory says we have 500ml of X, anyone know where it is?"
> This is how you wind up spending many, many $ remediating a building
Oh yes, and this isn't a new phenomenon, for instance:
"When Cambridge's physicists moved out of the famous Cavendish laboratories in the mid-1970s, they unintentionally left behind a dangerous legacy: a building thoroughly contaminated with mercury. Concern about rising levels of mercury vapour in the air in recent months led university officials to take urine samples from 43 of the social scientists who now have offices in the old Cavendish. The results, announced last week, show that some people have exposure levels comparable to people who work with mercury in industry."[0]
[0] The mercury the physicists left behind https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12817450-800-the-merc...
You call your university's EHS department and tell them as much about what you know about the contents of the bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine about the contents, destroy it safely.