{"id":51702,"date":"2014-02-23T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/uncategorized\/how-dirty-are-you-part-1-parafilm-take-a-quiz\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:58:17","slug":"how-dirty-are-you-part-1-parafilm-take-a-quiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/blogs\/gnbl4689\/how-dirty-are-you-part-1-parafilm-take-a-quiz","title":{"rendered":"How Dirty Are You? Part 1 Parafilm…Take a Quiz!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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image from about.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of years ago I gave a presentation about general lab practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How dirty are you? Common lab practices that may impact data quality are examined using various gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques. (look for this presentation on the last How Dirty are You?<\/em> blog…i cant give you the answers now!)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We work in very close quarters in our lab\u2026we have grown in staff but not in space. This means that I sometimes have to squeeze into one of our hoods with a colleague or two.  I started to notice little differences in the way each person goes about their work. For example, some people always place syringes on a clean paper towel while others don\u2019t or some people will use a Pasteur pipette more than once while some won\u2019t. I realized that I have lab habits that could be more ritualistic than meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the funniest things is rinsing a glass syringe- everyone has a number and a story- but we will get to that in a future \u201cHow Dirty Are You?<\/strong><\/em>\u201d blog. There will be at least six subjects covered in this blog series. These will discuss other sources of contamination like gloves, syringes, pipet bulbs, tubing\u2026etc.  I will also post the percent of correct answers from the first audience to participate (FPRW 2012 Restek Vendor Seminar) and include answers I receive via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This blog is about Parafilm\u2026personally, I love the stuff and have used it for years. One day a colleague of mine instructed to never use \u201cthat stuff<\/em>\u201d because it will contaminate your sample. Really, I thought\u2026I have used it forever and it doesn\u2019t seem like it would be too soluble in acetonitrile. I just couldn\u2019t believe it. So I thought, \u201cHeck, I am an analytical chemist, why don\u2019t I test it?\u201d Of course my colleagues were on board so this is what we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parafilm is often used to store samples or temporarily top open containers like beakers so to mimic a worst case scenario, we soaked approximately 25 mg Parafilm directly in 3 mL of solvent for 60 minutes. The image below shows the eight solvents we tested and the Parafilm submerged in the each vial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the 60 minute soak time, we tested each sample using GC-FID. We used a hydrocarbon standard for signal intensity reference. As a teaser, I will tell you that the highest contamination peak was about 3 times higher than our 50 ppm hydrocarbon peak!!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See the Answers!<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago I gave a presentation about general lab practices. How dirty are you? Common lab practices that may impact data quality are examined using various gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques. (look…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"industries-application":[],"post-badge":[],"resource-type":[],"product-library":[],"resource-technique":[2294],"hf_cat_post":[623],"ppma_author":[594],"class_list":["post-51702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","resource-technique-gas-chromatography-gc"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":9,"label":"Blogs"}],"resource-technique":[{"value":2294,"label":"Gas Chromatography (GC)"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Brenda Cogan","author_link":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/author\/brenda-coganrestek-com\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":9,"name":"Blogs","slug":"blogs","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":9,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":442,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":9,"category_count":442,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Blogs","category_nicename":"blogs","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"authors":[{"term_id":594,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"julie-kowalski","display_name":"Julie Kowalski","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83476,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51702\/revisions\/83476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"industries-application","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industries-application?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"post-badge","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-badge?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"resource-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-type?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"product-library","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product-library?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"resource-technique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-technique?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"hf_cat_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hf_cat_post?post=51702"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discover.restek.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=51702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}