You can walk through the hallways of Smith Chemistry Building this semester and literally smell the hard work of aspiring chemists behind laboratory walls. The odors wafting through Smith, and also several other buildings on campus, are courtesy of the labs’ failing fume hoods, which are causing potentially harmful chemical fumes to circulate through the buildings rather than being filtered outdoors.
Al Simpson, manager of Environmental Health and Safety, said in an earlier interview with The Daily Helmsman that the single most important safety system in the labs is the ventilation system, especially fume hoods.
Post-doctorate fellow Jason Palcic said the issue dates back a year, maybe a little more, when chemistry professor Theodore Burkey first brought concern to the attention of Physical Plant and Planning.
At about the same time, over half of the 123 fume hoods in labs in Ellington Hall, Smith Hall, Life Sciences, Engineering Technology and on South Campus reportedly failed inspection. Now, 24 hoods top the list of needed laboratory renovations.
Members of the chemistry department agree the hoods were in desperate need of maintenance.
The failure of the hoods to function properly is more than a health hazard, though. It also interferes with students’ education. “This certainly limits what we can do,” said chemistry professor Peter Bridson.
Burkey said poorly-functioning fume hoods seriously hinder all educational agendas because no one can afford to risk using the faulty hoods. Therefore many experiments must be altered, and sometimes canceled all together.
“We don’t work with any serious toxics,” Burkey said. “But if we did and something went wrong, we could be in big trouble.”
The nature of many experiments is having to being transformed entirely, and non-toxic solvents substituted for toxic ones, in hope of maintaining the principles of lessons, according to Bridson and Palcic.
The situation is posing a problem for many freshmen students though, Burkey said, because a lot of the experiments that are being called off are vital to the chemistry curriculum.
The hoods are comparable to seat belts in these experiments, according to Burkey — usually only necessary for peace of mind — but now, he said, “We can’t even take the risk.”
Next semester, Burkey said, the department will have to destroy all chemicals as they are created to ensure safety, or “we can’t create them at all.”
The original ventilation designs, from 1965, had the whole system destined for disaster, according to Burkey.
“I’m really surprised it worked at all when they started,” Burkey said.
Ventilation hoods typically are built to run up and down in order to directly flush out fumes; however, the fifth floor of Smith Hall, which houses all air intake shafts, fume hoods and the bulk of the ventilation system, was designed a bit differently.
All hoods in Smith Hall run horizontally, and actually dip downward at some points, posing a situation where a single gust of air could cause fumes from a failing hood to be thrust back through intake chambers and re-circulated back down as far as the first floor.
“It’s a serious problem,” said associate chemistry professor Mark Freilich. “You can certainly walk down first floor halls and tell what experiments are going on.”
The failing hoods are way too common a problem for comfort, according to Burkey.
“I don’t think any (hoods) are safe right now,” he said.
Burkey actually ran a test last year to determine the extent of the problem.
“I think I may have pissed a lot of people off by doing it,” he said.
He released an odorant in one of the labs with a broken fume hood, and sure enough, all students and faculty, from the first floor through the fifth, were aware of the smell.
Burkey said much of the problem is due to a lack of attention on the part of Physical Plant and Planning.
Original vent-motors are still running, according to Burkey, but they haven’t been serviced or even cleaned in 30 years.
“There’s no periodic maintenance and no periodic check-ups,” Burkey said. “There’s an extremely high incidence of failure.”
There are two vacuum-like fume hoods in every lab, but the high probability of failure is more than a maintenance concern — it’s a potential health threat. The malfunctioning hoods increase the probability that contaminated air will be recycled through the building.
Unlike regular buildings, Burkey said the labs are designed to trap all fumes inside and evacuate them through hoods outdoors to avoid the re-cycle. However, the likely failure of a single hood could cause the lab’s contained and controlled air supply to become tainted and sucked back through the ventilation system.
Burkey doesn’t like to point the finger too much, he said, because he understands the tight budget the physical plant is working with. Their work is cut out for them with the estimated $3.8 million cost for hoods amounting to only a fraction of the $47 million maintenance agenda across campus according to Burkey.
Luckily, Burkey said that after budget cuts, $900,000 was left in surplus for campus-wide use. Upon further review by The Tennessee Board of Regents, repair of faulty fume hoods was given priority in the spending of surplus funds.
According to Palcic, renovations will begin around February 2002, but are unlikely to be completed until Summer 2002.
In the meantime, Freilich said the department is doing all it can to provide adequate education for chemistry students despite the limitations.
“It may be more difficult to conduct experiments and it may be more expensive and require more work,” Freilich said. “But we’re going to do what we have to.”
