Environmentally-Friendly Chem Labs

I totally want to take this class at the University of Oregon.

The EPA defines green chemistry as:

"...the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances."

The 12 Principle of Green Chemistry.

I have often thought about how to make labs more eco-friendly. In a lab, throwing away gloves, metal, glass and gallons of chemicals is a daily habit. You forget that the lab isn't a sealed environment. Whenever you leave you wash your hands and take off your lab coat, you're clean. But what all the trash the university or company has to deal with?

Part of the problem is that if you are working on a basic science problem or in a clinical situation you feel like your work will be doing some good down the road, so the waste will be justified in the end.

Green chemistry focuses on ensuring chemical processes are efficient in their use of material, make things that are better for the environment and preserve energy. The focus is twofold: invent chemicals and processes that are cleaner than what we have now and do the inventing in an environmentally-friendly way.

I looked around MSU's Web site for some clues as to what's going on here. I found one lab that mentions green chem but no overreaching campus initiative to make things better.

Reading this makes me want to make my lab safer.

Oobleck

I thought I would join the YouTube bandwagon for this post. I used "science" as a search term and came up with one pretty cool example. (I do hope it's real, I found some fake science experiments in my search. The best by far is the Look Around You series.)

Here's a second video with a much bigger vat of cornstarch.

I looked around for some cornstarch articles on Google Scholar and PubMed but most of them had to do with eating cornstarch instead of walking on it.

Oobleck behaves as a non-newtonian fluid. Newtonian fluids react in a fixed proportion to pressure. If you push twice as hard, there's twice as much resistance. So when you try to step on water you push right through, there is nothing special about the molecules near your foot.

Non-newtonian fluids can have non-proportional reactions due to their sensitivity to gradients in flow speeds.

Oobleck gets incredibly viscous over small areas when strong pressure is applied. Oobleck molecules do care about their neighbors, a lot. If your foot is creating a change in the flow gradient, pushing one area of the liquid around a lot faster than the neighbors are being pushed, they stiffen up and push back. The reaction of the liquid isn't proportional to the pressure applied, it's complicated by the locals.

Okay, that hurt my brain so I'm not even going to attempt to explain what's happening in the video up top.

More fun with cornstarch (or sand or sugar). Sorry about the noise.

Now, let's combine crazy liquids with art (video). These artist/scientists used magnetic liquid in their sculpture. The magnetic fields are controlled by a computer that detects sound in the room. As a result, you get crazy movement when there's lots of noise. One of the artists, Sachiko Kodama, has a new solo project using magnetic liquids.

Magnetic liquids can be used in inkjet printers so that text or patterns can be read by machines.

Dampening is more common use for these liquids. Magnetic liquids can be manipulated by applying magnetic fields. When the field is off, the substance behaves as a liquid. With the application of the field the substance becomes thicker and resists motion. Some car shocks use this property to adjust stiffness depending on road conditions.

Can You Say "Tipping Point"?

Abstract number two.

President Bush plans to weigh in on the healthcare debate tomorrow during his state of the union address. Hillary Clinton is proposing legislation to expand the federal health plan for children. And of course, Schwarzenegger is doing his best to pass his own pet insurance plan.

But, as you probably know, these are not the ground breakers.

Way back in the day, 1989 to be exact, Oregon had a plan: the Oregon Health Plan or OHP.

Basically, the Oregon plan expanded Medicare to cover more of the state's uninsured. They started out by providing enrollment in managed healthcare plans to residents that earned 100 percent of the federal poverty level. But in order to expand the number of people they covered, the plan limited the services provided. When the OHP budget was drawn up, all the treatments would be prioritized and then the line was drawn.

“Every two years the state legislature would literally draw a line in the list, with Oregon Medicaid paying for all services above the line and no services below it,” Jonathan Oberlander wrote in his study on the failure of the plan.

None of the current state proposals have this rationing built in. But the plan didn't fail because of the controversial line drawing, instead the state tried to enlarge the plan even more in the beginning of this decade. However, complicated enrollment rules, changes in co-pays and deductibles and substantial premiums for the new members, caused many people to drop out of the program. Add an extreme economic slump and the OHP stopped accepting members in 2004.

The message to states going down this path is a basic one: don't change a bunch of things all at once (also, don't provide a tax kicker, but that's another story).

Other States
The newest plan on the horizon is from Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. This plan is so new the legislation hasn't been written yet, but it has a couple of shiny new ideas tucked inside.

Rendell noticed what a lot of other governors are noticing these days: uninsured people use medical services anyway and the state ends up paying, a lot. So since the state's already paying, let's reduce the cost of medical care.

The proposal suggests saving money by reducing medical errors, preventing hospital-based infections, outlawing smoking in the workplace and increasing the tasks that can be performed by nurses. And that's just the "cost-cutting side." On the "where will this money come from side," we have an increase in the cigarette tax and a payroll tax for businesses that don't provide health insurance to their employees.

I haven't seen the details yet, but Bush's plan sounds awfully confusing to me. It goes something like this- we will make people who pay a lot for health insurance pay even more by taxing their plans and then we will use that tax money to subsidize the purchase of less expensive insurance for others.

I get that part where money from rich is supposed to go to poor (except that most people who work and get insurance through their employer don't have a lot of choice in coverage). But this is also supposed to be some kind of mechanism that will reduce the average price of insurance over time. Hmmm. Well, if we assume that the most expensive plans are purchased through employers that don't offer options to employees and probably switch providers once in a decade, I really don't see how this will work.

Massachusetts, the first state to require that residents purchase health insurance has had their plan in place since April 2006. Residents earning less than three times the federal poverty level can get a subsidized plan with no deductible (that includes dental!).

I'm excited about dental because dentistry is neglected by many insurance plans and many, many people visit the ER with dental issues.

California is still in the midst of the heath insurance battle. Schwarzenegger proposed, the assembly passed but the senate is on the fence on the $12 billion dollar plan. One of the fights is whether the money will come from taxes or fees. Fee are the magic word here, if you say TAXES, Schwarzenegger will have gone back on campaign promises.

The Robert Wood Johnson foundation is tracking state plans.

Not that kind of organ.

I mean organ (see number 6) in the sense of an information outlet.

My first abstract.
One thing that we need to get out of the way: if you look at the origins of the study, its lead author belongs to the department of onchology according to the Pub Med abstract. However, "onchology" is not a real word, but there is an oncology institute in Sheffield. I looked it up to make sure onchology wasn't the study of the urge to vomit when goo is introduced into the oral cavity.

That's what this study is about, the goo, or alginate, dentists and orthodontists use to take impressions of your teeth. I recall when first entering the world of orthodontia at the tender age of 11, I was offered a choice of flavors by the technician in the fancy scrubs. But no matter what kind I chose, strawberry or mint, I always felt ready to throw up after about 2 minutes. Apparently this is a common problem. So, these acupuncture-dentists try to solve it with needles.

Alginate is also used for life casting and making Hollywood masks.


This study by Palle Rosted and associates looked at the effectiveness of acupuncture in preventing dental patients from gagging when the alginate is placed in their mouths. They were surprisingly successful.

The dentists needled the patients in a spot directly below the lower lip, in the center of the chin at a spot denoted CV 24. CV24 stands for Conception Vessel 24 in the Chinese medicine map of meridians.

The Process
They first tried to get the impression tray in the participants' mouths, then the tray plus goo. Meanwhile the acupuncture-dentists collected information on the patients' gagging feelings. Next they applied the needle. Then they gave it another go with the goo.

Problems
The patients were chosen because they were unable to undergo normal dental procedures because of gagging, so people with a less severe problem with the process might not benefit in the same way. However, the goal of treating people with a serious difficulty receiving dental treatment was met and how widely it can be applied might not be so important.

Everybody got acupuncture. There was no comparison group to show that having someone spend an extra amount of time fussing over you won't cure your gagging issues.

The Last Part
I chose this study because it rates high on my gee whiz scale, mostly. I didn't know that gagging during dental procedures was common. I didn't know what alginate was. I didn't know what acupuncture point they were using and when I found out I wasn't sure why. Actually, I'm still not sure why they chose that point. Finally, I like that they took a very practical problem and used an unusual tool to solve it.