Kristine: Of course, as a professional consultant in the field of facility decontamination, I should opine that you should hire a professional to oversee the project and develop a decontamination plan. Failing that, we generally first do a visual inspection, looking for dust or crystalline buildups. Of course, crystals are the major concern as they can be high-energy materials. If you had a concern about radioactive species, a run with a field detector would be a good thing. If you're going to decontaminate the metal, there's no real reason to bother checking all of it to make sure what's on it. We would suggest using a trisodium phosphate detergent (you can make it warm if you like), which - although hard to find these days - is the only thing you really can use that will address all of your concerns. All of the wash and rinse water should be stored in temporary tanks (Baker Tanks - Rain for Rent) and tested prior to disposal. It may need to be sent to an industrial WW treatment facility for disposal. Simply washing these materials and draining them into your institution's sewer is a bad idea. As I mentioned above and will reiterate, there are professionals who do this all of the time. Even if you have a workforce who can carry out a plan, working with a consultant to develop a plan, having the plan approved by your fire department and wastewater facility, and reviewing the implementation of the plan on a regular basis are invaluable. Regards, Dave DAVE EINOLF Principal Endeavour EHS, LLC 5750 SE Carlton Street Portland OR 97206-6753 See our new website: www.endeavourehs.com=A0 971.678.8111 (w) 912.717.1533 (fax) dave**At_Symbol_Here**endeavourehs.com -----Original Message----- From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Danowski, Kristine L Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 9:38 AM To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: [DCHAS-L] decommissioning fume hoods DCHAS Listers: My university is renovating an old science building and plans to decommission and disassemble about 30 chemical fume hoods. These hoods have not been used for over three years. For which chemical residues do we need to test the exhaust ductwork and exhaust fans before disposing or recycling these items? Since these fume hoods were abandoned, no one is sure what was used in them. The previous owners are no longer at the university, so we can't check with them. I know we should check for radioactive residues, perchloric acid, heavy metals, and halogenated organics, but is there anything else specifically? How do we decontaminate the ductwork and exhaust fans? One site I checked mentioned washing with warm soapy water, but that was for the inside of the hood. Thank you very much. KD Please excuse the cross-posting
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