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Legal Issues and Laboratory Waste
Lab Safety Advisor, December 27, 2005
the October, 2005 issue of the American Society of Clinical Pathology's publication Laboratory Medicine, Daveda Holmberg, MT(ASCP) writes about the legal issues associated with laboratory waste in Minnesota. Companies that supply the lab industry, she says, often fail to report the hazardous chemical content on a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) if it is less than 1% because the Occupational Health and Safety Administration does not require it. However, pollution control agencies are now requesting this information, as they have found several "hidden" chemicals that are polluting the environment and intend to fine the hospitals if the practice continues.
Labs are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the chemical companies are not required to list every chemical on the MSDS and, in fact, some may be classified under the "trade secret" provision of the MSDS. On the other hand, according to the article, the labs have changed the ingredients into many unknown chemicals of unknown concentration the amounts of which can be itemized correctly only by the scientists who created the tests.
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