The Question

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:48:02 -0500 Natalie Galatzer <galatzer@uiuc.edu>
writes:
Hi Everyone,

I'm helping to start up a volunteer water quality monitoring program in Illinois for Prairie Rivers Network, and I'm wondering how current programs have volunteers deal with waste from the test kits they use.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,
Natalie Galatzer
galatzer@uiuc.edu

Responses

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:53:44 -0500
From: jonathan n roth <jonnr@juno.com>
Subject: [volmonitor] Re: dealing with test kit waste
To: VOLMONITOR <volmonitor@lists.epa.gov>

Hi, We advise that dispensing about a teaspoon of clorox into the dish so that the surface is covered will kill everything within 10 minutes and then the dishes can be thrown out with the trash, or you can keep a bucket with about a 10% clorox sulution in it and throw them into this so that when the bucket is full, you can pour off the clorox water and trash the dishes. Another way is to buy ovenproof turkey" bags at the grocer and fill them and heat them to 300 F in your kitchen oven for an hour and then throw the whole thing out. One of these methods is the easiest for persons without an autoclave. Some people may claim that microwaving for 5 minutes will kill everything, but that is subject to more variation and
I am not as confident of that approach. Jonathan Roth, Ph.D.

(Website administrator's note: This may not apply to all types of test kits. It seems to be specific to bacteria tests.)

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:51:58 -0500
From: mark a kuechenmeis a kuechenmeister <markkstreamteam888@juno.com>
Subject: [volmonitor] Re: dealing with test kit waste

In Missouri, St. Louis, county to be exact at least once or twice a year we have a place that you can drop off household cleaners, paint, and other hazardous waste for safe disposal. This is whereI take my waste products from our monitering. I put our waste liquids from our dissolved oxygen samples and our our nitrate samples into a plastic bottle and label it hazardous waste.

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