Week 6 - Tuesday

Good and bad news...today we re-looked at the chromatograms and realized there was a switch that must have happened between the reagent blank and a real sample during a transfer step during processing. This was confirmed through our duplicate analysis. The reagent blank looks exactly like the sample "field site #3 duplicate". We can never know for sure but the chromatograms are fairly undeniable. We still don't know where the other contamination came from in the other QC samples (which is the bad news). Tomorrow when we run our 2nd retrieval samples we will have a better idea. If I don't find out what caused it by the time I leave the staff here are very motivated in finding where it came from....they want to succeed. Anna has picked up fairly fast on the GC training I'm happy to say. I will post if and when we find out what might have happened...or any other interesting revelations.

Here are the internal dimensions of the oven shown as actual(usable): DxWxH 55cm(53), 33cm(29, shelf braces), 31cm(31). We can fit a maximum of 7 cages inside (more practically 6). I do not think it is possible to put an exhaust fan or a port on it, it is the wrong type of oven for that. If there are any more questions about the oven feel free to ask.

Today we re-updated the calibration table for the front and back detector (Anna and I, Marie, Adama, and Vieux were present too). We keep running into problems with some compounds continually shifting retention times (propanil, dimethoate, fipronil). We ran in to some other problems with the back column. I think we may need to invest in some backup and/or new columns. I don't think the back column is in all that good of shape as near as I can tell. We vialed up some new standards and are running those tonight.

Tomorrow we will run the 2nd retrieval samples on the GC and start working on the calculation spreadsheet.

We did a dialysis on the blank LFT we put out into the lab. I'm not sure if we can run these on the GC before I leave though. If I don't I am confident the staff can.