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Comment by onecommentman | Hacker News Reader

Why isn’t lab glassware, with few exemptions, a single use item? How can the human safety risks in cleaning, and the analysis risks from residual contamination be valued less than the cost of fresh equipment made of…glass. Really nice glass, but simply mass-produced objects made of silicon and oxygen. Just make some more.

The 1970s Muppet Show US television program had a recurring segment on “Muppet Labs” with a hapless lab assistant named Beaker given silly and dangerous things to do by his boss. These cleaning processes sound like a Beaker bit. But the Muppet Show was a comedy…

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Because laboratory glassware is very expensive and that would be massively wasteful? Also, most labs that I have been in make regular use of custom made glassware. Most chemistry departments employ a glassblower! Also, for very sensitive experiments, you would most certainly want to clean even brand new unused glassware.

Glass is amazing for chemistry not only because it is chemically inert, transparent, has a high melting temperature, and is reasonably strong but also because it is easy to clean!

> How can the human safety risks in cleaning, and the analysis risks from residual contamination be valued less than the cost of fresh equipment made of…glass.

Because these things can cost hundreds of dollars apiece [1]. They're handmade, and many universities run their own glassblowing shops [1] so that researchers can have the instruments they need precisely tuned to whatever is required. Training to be a glassblower that can produce the required quality takes almost a decade [3], if you want more pictures on just how insanely complex a single piece can get look here [4].

[1] https://hooloodistill.com/products/borosilicate-glass-distil...

[2] https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/aatc/service/scientific-glassblowi...

[3] https://www.bath.ac.uk/case-studies/the-underrated-art-of-sc...

[4] https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/inside-scientific-glassblow...

If you are working in a lab that needs that level of cleaning, then odds are that what you do with the glass when you use it is also dangerous. There is a reason that the stereotypical chemist wears gloves, goggles, and a labcoat.

Also, lab glass is more expensive than it looks. If you care about this level of cleanliness, then you likely also care about the precision of your glassware. And lab glassware comes in much more exotic and hard to make forms than beakers. You also might not be able to throw it away in the normal trash because it is contaminated with something hazardous.

You're also not buying your equipment from Amazon either. I do some very very laughable to even calling chemistry, but I don't trust the crap on Amazon. At. All. I'm only working with sodium hydroxide and some oils, but I was even hesitant about buying stainless still from fear of knock off aluminum coated crap sold as stainless.

For anyone wanting to play the home game thinking they can just have their supplies same day from Amazon, just don't

A lot of it is not mass-produced (https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassb...). Even if you used brand-new pieces, for analytical work, you'd still need to clean them according to these procedures to remove residues from manufacturing, storage, and shipping.

Because a lot of glassware is not easy to clean and manufacture, like beakers, flasks and tubes.

A lot of lab glassware involves complex joins. Condensers and refluxers have tubes in tubes with edges that are not even accessible.

There may be reasonable arguments to use some of the cheaper glassware once. I know I have chucked glassware instead of cleaning it. Specially if I used it for something I never want near anything else.

This bit "but simply mass-produced objects made of silicon and oxygen. Just make some more." is so agonizingly wrong I feel compelled to comment.

Some of the more exotic items are custom-designed and hand-made, and are exceedingly rare. Backlogs exist. "Please, don't retire, keep making us glassware" problems exist in chemistry departments. Various articles surface about this particular problem every so often.

And, frankly, if people are taking this much time to clean the glass, it should be obvious to you that one of your priors is wrong.

Yeah, let's burn through $500 worth of glassware for every single freshmen's weekly lab class. We occasionally used flasks worth $300. Let's also make computers single use as well.

I did this on a small scale all the time.

Rather than running it in a 10mL round bottom, just use a 25 mL vial. You can fit a rubber septum and purge it. Magnetic stir bars are small enough to fit. You can add reagents using a syringe.

Then just rinse and toss after.

Quality glassware isn’t cheap because the ground glass joint has to be precisely ground to not leak. But if you don’t need a condenser or drop funnel, disposable vials work just fine.

A lot of lab stuff is single-use plastic. But that is more on the bio side, that wouldn't work for chemistry. And there the glass is simply too expensive, so you have to reuse it. It's also not just flasks but also coolers and e.g. distillation bridges. Those are much more complex glassware.

For most items you don’t need to do anything beyond a scrub and rinse. Others have pointed out that glassware is expensive and sometimes unique. Additionally, if you don’t need much product (eg. you’re screening reaction conditions), you can work with small disposable vials or even plates.

Do you wear glasses? Why don't you buy a new pair every day?

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