Cor­rect envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions are cru­cial for dif­fer­ent bulk pack­ag­ing stor­age chem­i­cals. List­ed below are some ways of ade­quate chem­i­cal stor­age :

Seg­re­ga­tion

Do not store unseg­re­gat­ed chem­i­cals in alpha­bet­i­cal order or incom­pat­i­ble chem­i­cals in close vicin­i­ty to each oth­er. The amount of space between dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal class­es relies on the amount of stor­ing area vacant in the lab. Do not seg­re­gate chem­i­cal class­es into sep­a­rate rooms unless they will only be used in that room. Seg­re­ga­tion that dis­turbs the usu­al work flow or neces­si­tates fre­quent trans­port of chem­i­cals between labs will increase the like­li­hood of a chem­i­cal spill.

Chem­i­cal Stor­age out­side the Lab

All stor­age cab­i­nets locat­ed in hall­ways must be labelled with the name of the own­er and also with list of the cabinet’s con­tents. This infor­ma­tion­al mate­r­i­al is crit­i­cal for emer­gency per­son­nel who may work in the evening. The prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor must com­plete a Hall­way Stor­age Sign Form (Appen­dix J) for each cab­i­net locat­ed in a hall­way.

Flam­ma­ble and Com­bustible Liq­uid Storage

The stor­ing of flam­ma­ble and com­bustible liq­uids in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, shop, or build­ing area must be retained to the small­est pos­si­ble amount need­ed for research and process­es. Con­tain­ers of one gal­lon and larg­er flam­ma­ble liq­uids must be kept in a flam­­ma­ble-liq­uids stor­age cab­i­net. Flam­­ma­ble-liq­uids stor­age cab­i­nets are not pro­ject­ed for the stor­age of high­ly tox­ic mate­ri­als, acids, bases, com­pressed gas­es or pyrolyt­ic chem­i­cals.

Shock Sen­si­tive Chemicals

Shock sen­si­tiv­i­ty denotes the prone­ness of the chem­i­cal to rapid­ly decom­pose or explode when struck, vibrat­ed or oth­er­wise agi­tat­ed. Some chem­i­cals become pro­gres­sive­ly shock sen­si­tive with time. It is advised to write the date received and date opened on all con­tain­ers of shock sen­si­tive chem­i­cals. Unless an inhibitor was added by the man­u­fac­tur­er, closed con­tain­ers of shock sen­si­tive mate­ri­als should be dis­card­ed after 1 year. Open con­tain­ers of shock sen­si­tive mate­ri­als should be cast­ed off with­in 6 months of open­ing.

Des­ig­nat­ed Areas

All loca­tions with­in the lab­o­ra­to­ry where acute­ly tox­ic, car­cino­genic, or repro­duc­tive haz­ards are stored should be defined with labelled area cau­tion tape. Pre-print­­ed tape is avail­able from the Chem­istry stock­room or the lab work­er may write ​‘labelled area’ on yel­low tape and use that. Stor­age areas should be sep­a­rat­ed from oth­er chem­i­cal stor­age as the avail­able space allows. Do not iso­late chem­i­cals into sep­a­rate rooms. This will esca­late the need to trans­port the chem­i­cal and increase the risk of a spill. At Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al, we take spe­cial care in stor­ing our chem­i­cals. You can know more about our stor­age method by con­tact­ing us.