Hi All,
Back in late September I asked how NMR labs deal with broken NMR tubes and
the all too frequent lack of reporting of those incidents. Here are the
many responses that I received with identifiers remove. I also removed
photos and attachments just to streamline this email.
I take some comfort in seeing there is no obvious solution I overlooked. I
have been told that cameras are forbidden here at Boise State University,
including fake cameras unless I want to pay OIT to install and control it
(not happening). But I tend not to like that method anyway. I would like
to see voluntary reporting and my main reasons for getting that reporting
to happen are those shown below.
1.
Can I teach against the issue and reduce breakage? – If I do not know
how it happened I cannot try to teach against it.
2.
Chemical hygiene – It amazes me to see so many synthetic organic
chemists, even ones who are working on known cytotoxic compounds seem to be
oblivious to any possible risks. A P-Chem teacher I had told the story
of being ready to let a lab tech go for missing so much time due to skin
rash issues until he saw that another student was using her desk as a
sample prep area when she was not there. That “other” student was
working with powders which were a known problem for skin contact and was
not cleaning up after preparing samples. That one story told to me as an
undergrad is still always on my mind when I am in a Chemistry Building.
I think the breakage I have witnessed or had reported is pretty evenly
split between poor mechanical skills and being in too much of a rush. As
one person commented I do try to get the hyper students to take breath and
slow down in the lab. I have always been in labs which spread the repair
cost out over the users and do not try to charge back. The one time I did
try to recover the cost of a dropped and shattered ceramic rotor that I
witnessed, the PI pushed back based on how often I had sought recovery for
other problems and I decided he was right. My budget was easily able to
cover an expense like that.
Here are the many replies, thanks to Daniel Plant, Yong Wah Kim, Allan
Kershaw, Robin Stein, Charlie Fry, Mike Strain, Jerry Hirschinger, Steve
Huhn, Ronald Shin, Tom Stringfellow, Rajan Paranji, and Dean Olson (I
apologize if I missed anyone)
Good luck with that. I have a video surveillance system. I only care if
the broken glass is in my magnets.
How about installing a camera in the lab, pointing at the magnets, and
telling everyone that this is done for their safety? These are cheap like
nothing these days, they can be monitored remotely and some of them have SD
card slots to record video. QuiteRaspberry Pi running Motion. It stores
motion activated video to a remote server. neat...
Time to review the security footage…haha
You just have to assume you’re working with grownups…not always the case.
My colleague got very upset with a student who broke a tube and didn’t
clean it up or report it.
He found the glass laying on his back under the magnet…he wanted them
kicked out of school..
Worst is when it’s inside the probe, they don’t report it and the next
person drops a sample and grinds the glass… especially when we used to
spin…
about 20 years ago I have an incident of a broken NMR tube stuck inside the
probe. The faculty who is trying to help out in my absence tried inserting
and ejecting the rotors several times to get the experiment going. When I
removed the probe I could poured out the broken glass. The piling action
of inserting another tube causes the broken glass sideways braking the
insert supporting the NMR coil.
We instituted a no fault policy, "report anything that you felt is not
right at the NMR spectrometer and you will not be responsible (don't have
to worry about paying) for any breakage discovered!" Since then I still
have broken NMR tubes in or near the spectrometer, but nothing serious in
20 years.
I, too, have this problem. As part of the orientation each user has to
gain access, I have a specific protocol (page 2 of the attachment) for them
to follow. For the most part this works, but there are always those who
feel that their situation does not apply and therefore it is okay not to
follow the SOP. To help catch these, I have cameras in all of the
instrument rooms. When I do catch a violator, I will generally send a note
to them and their PI which usually brings them back in line.
This is unfortunately an intrinsic property of an NMR lab. I think the only
way to enforce broken tube reporting is extreme: to install cctv and say
that anyone who fails to report a broken tube will be permanently banned
from the lab.
My suggestion would be to make sure you always wear thick trousers and
sweep under the magnet before changing the probes.
Unfortunately, I don't think a sign-off sheet will help. I was at MIT for
10 years in the DCIF, and the problem of broken tubes, damaged instruments,
and other questionable acts (including a chair stuck under a 500MHz NMR,
multiple beer bottles left in the lab, and a dog collar stuck to the bottom
of a magnet) was never solved. Despite multiple assurances that blame was
not going to assigned, it was rare that anyone ever came forward.
Instruments and probes were damaged multiple times and the staff never
informed. It was just a fact of life I learned to deal with.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Nice to hear from you, Joe. As long as you work in a shared NMR Lab, you
will never totally figure it out – but you know that!
See our financial authorization form attached.
It's the same here....I try and tell them that I know that mistakes happen,
that it's a lab with high turnover, that I won't be mad, but I just want to
know what happens so I can fix it as quickly as possible, and this does
help convince some students to tell me once they notice that things have
gone wrong, especially when it's somebody else who has caused it! But I
think it's impossible to get everybody to inform me of everything.
Occasionally I think they look for me, but if I'm not right there that
second, they feel like they've done their duty-no call, no email is
necessary from their point of view.
I don't have them sign anything because I figure that as adults in graduate
school and above, they should know to accept responsibility, or at least
that signing something won't change their behavior! Also I don't like
keeping track of paper.
If you figure out a good solution, I'd like to hear it!
My first reaction is, wow, they have a clean environment at Boise State!
We see broken glass shards all the time around our equipment. I don't
think I'm exaggerating to say that we see some type of broken glass around
one of our instruments on at least a twice monthly basis. I find this, of
course, very bothersome and worrisome. I worry about chemical safety in
particular. It is possible that it's related to our robots, but haven't
been able to figure out how. And long ago, I gave up on the idea that
students would "fess up" about a broken tube, although it isn't all that
infrequent that a student will let us know that they've broken a tube, and
want us to help with and/or inspect the cleanup. Still, most breakage goes
unreported. Even if the robot is the cause, why wouldn't the student let
us know their tube is broken?
We have considered the idea of putting up cameras in the lab, and decided
against that as being too intrusive on privacy. We have a couple SampleJet
robots, and do have cameras mounted in them (but not toward the person
putting the samples into it) so we can see what the problem is when the
robot fails. The main corollary to all this is that , even with all the
broken glass we see, it doesn't seem to have had a recognizably adverse
impact on the spectrometer operations.
I decided I'd test our facility just now. Walked around and sure enough,
found broken glass on our busiest 400, one that has a SampleJet robot and
runs >100 samples per day. This is pretty typical of what we see.
I have no good ideas as to how the glass shows up in our place. We do not
see any "chemical mess", sample spillage; if we did, that would require
significant action to prevent and/or have reported. So perhaps the top of
the tube is breaking under the caps? But then how does that glass get out
of the tube and around the spectrometer. Very mysterious. We see very
similar shards in different locations at spectrometers that don't have the
SampleJet, so I don't _think_ it's the robot. Much of the glass we see
elsewhere is on the floor next to the magnet.
Sorry for the length of the reply. This is something that's bothered me
quite a bit for a while. I certainly will be interested in how others
respond.
P.S. Prior to our having robots, we saw more breakage that involved
chemical spills. These often were breaks and spills into the bore and
often into the probe. The student would pull the tube sideways to
themselves when removing samples, before they had the samples all the way
out of the magnet bore, and that would snap the tubes at the top of the
bore. Most of those, but not all, were reported.
For a while I had people actually sign a user agreement but eventually
gave up on that. It seemed to make no difference. I have regularly
encountered shards of precision glass thin-wall tubing, with occasional
NMR tube cap attached. I assume these are the result of low-probability
spontaneous cosmic events, e.g. neutrinos, sneaker waves, or maybe
something to do with quantum entanglement. No one fesses up, but people
always miss some bits of glass left for forensic analysis.
We've have a "no fault" policy to try to get people to report problems,
mistakes, breakages. But broken tubes still happen. I try to get people
to "slow down" when they are changing samples, to little avail. Grad
students seem to pride themselves on how fast they can knock out a
spectrum, letting the chips fall where they may. Undergrads are generally
more cautious and deliberate.
Despite broken tubes outside the magnet, we've had no broken tubes in the
probe for as long as I can remember... except for the sample that exploded
in the upper barrel just after being let go. I was able to shake the
remains of the tube out of the probe... like salt out of a shaker.
Thankfully no injuries or damage other than the need for a thorough
cleaning. (flush with ethanol). The grad student likely did an ethanol
flush later than evening, I'm not sure.
How about a wildlife cam aimed at the sample change area?
I’ll suggest to you that it is not important who broke the tube, and trying
to find out can kill your user cooperation. It is important only that it
gets cleaned up and research keeps moving, IMO. Whoever broke it knows
they broke it, and knows that was not good, so what use is it for me to
tell them that I know they broke it? What does the ‘gotcha’ do for
either? We try to keep a culture of blameless cooperation in our facility.
We stress from the very first training that there is no penalty, payment,
or report to supervisor for any breakage. We want them to bring ALL
problems to us, whether major or minor, and the objective is to keep
research moving for everyone. I NEVER go to the supervisors! That would
violate the trust we’re trying to maintain. There is no gain from that -
only pain. In my experience, Supervisors expect the Facility to take care
of it without their involvement anyway. They don’t want me to bring them
my problems.
We train them to use only two fingers to hold the spinner to insert or
remove a tube, so there is ultimate flexibility and no breakage. We
demonstrate how pulling the sample down from the magnet will break it off,
how holding the spinner down on the desk will break it off, and how holding
it in your fist will break it, too. We have tips for Tube Safety at every
spectrometer. We require all samples to be brought to the NMR inside a
secondary container. We removed all tube racks from the spectrometers, so
there is no place to set a sample down unless you have your own container.
When they bring a problem to me, the first thing I do is laugh it off and
tell them it’s not the first time. If I can give them a pointer to avoid a
repeat, I will, but usually they tell me how they screwed up.
Build a culture, feed it with trust, and it will grow.
I’m probably one of the more pessimistic people when it comes to these
types of things, which is why I installed an inexpensive camera system.
150 bucks for this unit (assuming you buy a SATA hard drive for it):
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16881183058
I haven’t actually had to pull footage from the camera, except a couple of
times when unauthorized people were in there, thankfully. However, the
presence of the surveillance system + a sign letting people know that
they’re being recorded, has made people aware, that they do need to honest
and forthcoming if something happens, does really help.
Since everyone (or more accurately, everyone who has at least a modicum of
common sense) knows that they’re being recorded, they’ve all been pretty
good about self-reporting incidents like broken tubes, or if equipment
malfunctions (such as the sample handler not working because it needs a
simple O-ring replacement).
Questioning people without evidence isn’t going to be very productive, as
a lot of grad students, postdocs, etc., are going to prefer staying quiet,
and a lot of them are scared about incurring the wrath of their PI’s, and
it’s all too easy for people to try to shift the blame to others in such a
case.
My NMR opinion is probably not the more popular one in today’s society,
but when it comes to a facility that has multimillion dollar NMR equipment,
I simply prefer not to take any chances. That, plus people seem to become
more responsible with that policy in place.
Anyways, I hope all is well over at your facility.
We also have a *no fault* policy for accidents aka pilot error. We have
made it mandatory for users to report anything they sense as being out of
the norm. And they are required to use a reporting mechanism that has an
electronic trail. Most persons send me a picture in a text. We have had a
few instances of non reporting but using the last command helps to identify
those non compliant persons. I may have over stated the ability of the
system to track user interactions on a system. Now that most of them
believe they cannot get away with any misdeeds that helps too. I just hope
they never learn the true capability of TS and Linux or rather the lack
thereof.
As you know, you’re not alone in dealing with issues of responsibility. One
of my own favorites stories, which happened recently, is about the time I
found what appeared to be a full set of toenail clippings on the floor
under the desk for one of our spectrometer host computers. I also
periodically discover shards of spontaneously appearing NMR tubes.
After years of evolution, I now have two sign-off events (attached) for
every individual before they gain access to the NMR lab. The first is part
of a quiz and the second is on a final health and safety checklist. It’s
clearly an imperfect world, but I think I’ve helped to develop better
health and safety culture among the researchers in our building; this is,
of course, only a part of a much larger enterprise.
Hope you remember me and our memorable catch up during one of the ENC-s.
Compared to the number of people using my spectrometers, it is indeed
surprising that I have so few incidents of sample breakage of late. For
over a decade of training new users at my facility, I always make it a
point to emphasize (a) that this is their facility i.e. if they break
something they own it i.e. their P.I. eventually have to fork the cost of
repairing something expensive (b) one person's callousness leads to a down
time for all. In other words, I don't mind admitting that I am only a
custodian and not a czar of the facility and the whole lab setup is like a
messy democracy i.e. we all pay for the sins of our forfathers. Somehow,
the message seems to have percolated over the years. I guess nothing
spreads like gossip or word of mouth.
Nowadays, we do only one kind of training i.e. NMR safety training, which
focuses only on the points where a user can damage an instrument and its
consequences. This is followed by a quick primer about getting a basic 1D
proton and 13C. People are pretty happy. Of course, some of them return
for some hand holding when it comes to running more advanced experiments
but most of them follow their own lab's established spectroscopic methods.
I am familiar with the pushback scenario. The faculty member signs off, a
significant expense is incurred by a student, and the faculty member says
it does not matter, squawk, squawk, squawk.
Once, a person broke a probe via an accident that probably could have been
avoided. I forget the details. JS Wang wanted $3000 for the repair, so we
did that (probably a cracked insert from a too-fast thermal cycle). I
asked the faculty member if we could split the expense 50/50, because
accidents happen, but people need to be responsible for their own actions,
even if accidental. Nothing doing. He said no way. With the back-up of
my business office, I billed him for the entire $3000 just because he was
such a jerk about it. Around here, if the business office does it, it’s
done. Honestly, he never said anything and probably never noticed.
Naturally, he had a ton of money.
You hesitate to be too stringent about expenses because you do want people
to report accidents. We have faculty who understand that and do not put
their students in an in-between, awkward place. Other faculty will never
understand. As a result, we more or less build accident costs into the
rates to keep the peace.
______________________________________________
Regards,
Joe
*******************************
Joe Dumais, Ph.D.
Associate Research Professor/Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopist
Boise State University
College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
1910 University Drive, Boise, Idaho 83725-1520
(208) 426 4913
http://chemistry.boisestate.edu/
*******************************
Sent from my MS Windows PC
Received on Wed Oct 17 2018 - 08:03:32 MST