referencebooks

Laboratory Health and Safety Dictionary

By W. Carl Gottschall and Douglas B. Walters.

Published by Wiley Interscience, 2001.

This is a 6" by 9" paperback running to 458 pages including four appendices, plus a brief preface.

The back of the book says,

Chemical health and safety are impacted by federal, state, and local regulations, notably the OSHA Laboratory Standard, and are of concern to a wide range of personnel. Laboratory Health and Safety Dictionary defines basic and essential terms, making it a core reference for experienced as well as novice health and safety professionals. It will also help people with limited understanding and/or varying backgrounds better understand the vocabulary that is encountered in the field.

This authoritative compendium of chemical and health and safety concepts contains approximately 2,500 entries covering the broad spectrum of health and safety issues including all essential elements of a chemical hygiene plan, safety procedures, chemical exposures, etc. Words, terms, and expressions are included that are found or referenced in documents and regulations such as OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard and the Occupational Exposure to Hazardous Chemicals in the Laboratory Standard, Material Safety Data Sheets, Right-to-Know Legislation, and numerous other documents and lists of "hazardous" agents...

For a sense of the kind of terms defined, here is a list of the first sixteen entries in the "V" sequence:

• V
  
• VA
  
• vaccine
  
• vacuum
  
• valence
  
• validation
  
• vanadium (V)
  
• van der Waals, Johannes Diderik
  
• van der Waals forces
  
• van't Hoff, Jacobus Henricus
  
• vapor
  
• vapor density
  
• vapor pressure (VP)
  
• variable
  
• variance
  
• Vaseline™
  

Definitions are very minimal, usual just one short sentence. They sometimes require some background knowledge in biology or chemistry to understand. Here are a few typical examples:

kaolinosis     A form of pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of kaolin dust, usually a result of grinding, milling, or other operations.

hot zone     The area in a hazardous waste operation where contamination occurs.

gavage     Feeding by means of a tube inserted via the mouth and throat into the stomach.

enflourage     The extraction of odorous components of flowers in the production of perfumes and essential oils.

rolfing     Deep massage.

shall     The word used to denote a requirement or regulation as opposed to a recommendation.

This is a handy book for anyone working in a chemical or biological laboratory.

Van Nostrand's Encyclopedia of Chemistry, 5th Edition

Edited by Glenn D. Considine

Published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2005

This is an 8.5" by 11" hardbound book running to 1831 pages including the index, plus a brief preface and list of contributors.

The last previous edition of this encyclopedia was published in 1984. Lots has changed in chemistry since then. This edition of the Encyclopedia has about 2750 entries, versus 1250 for the 1984 edition. One of the reasons for the expansion is the increasing specialization and compartmentalization in the field. The preface says, "...In addition to 'classical' topics of chemistry, the new Encyclopedia covers nanotechnology, fuel cell technology, green chemistry, forensic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, brief biographies on scores of scientists, and materials chemistry." Besides topics a user of an encyclopedia of chemistry would normally expect to find, this one gives special attention to advanced processes, strategic raw materials, chemistry of metals, energy sources and conversion, analytical instrumentation, growing use of food chemicals, structure of matter; new and improved materials, plant chemistry, and biochemistry and biotechnology.

Entries range widely in length. The article on "Flavors and Essences," not one of chemistry's major topics, is nearly eight pages of fairly small print in this book, while the entries for "Micelle," "Michel, Hartmut," and "Microchemistry" are each only a few lines long. The brief enties are unsigned and the longer ones are signed by a contributor. The prose style varies slightly according to the scholar who contributed an article, but is always fairly readable considering the technical subject matter.

This is a very fine encyclopedia of chemistry.

1001 Chemicals in Everyday Products, 2nd Edition

By Grace Ross Lewis.

Published by Wiley Interscience, 1999.

This is a smaller paperback, measuring 7.5" by 9" and running to 388 pages including the index of chemicals and appendix, plus a preface.

This book aims to provide very basic information on the uses and dangers of a large number of chemicals found in common comsumer products.

It starts with a thirty-someodd page section with common questions and answers about common chemicals. These are things like "Why is it some food packaging does not list what is inside?," "Someone said that flounder, sole, and halibut are healthier to eat than tuna fish. Why is this so?," "Why is talcum powder dangerous?," etc. There are a total of 205 questions briefly answered in this section. All of these questions are easy to imagine coming up at the reference desk, so I think it's good to keep this book in mind as an information source for questions concerning chemicals. Unfortunately, these question-and-answer pairs aren't really indexed and are organized simply in the form of an arbitrary list in four sections (food additives, cosmetics, cleaning products, and miscellaneous), so access for reference purposes in this section isn't that great.

The bulk of the book, though, is devoted to information on 1001 chemicals. These are organized alphabetically by chemical name. 1001 chemicals in 250 pages or so doesn't leave a lot of room for detail, so what you get for each chemical are a brief statement of how it is used - that is, what kind of products it is used in and what it does - and precautions for use (whether it is an allergen, toxic if swallowed or breathed, a carcinogen, an irritant, etc.). Finally, for each chemical there is a list of synonyms, including trade names (all of which are found in the index in the back).

This is a fairly useful book, but like many reference books it makes one imagine that reference book it could have been. A book twice as long with twice as much information about each chemical would be great. Perhaps it could include some more technical information, but even strictly as a consumer book it could be more extensive and have other types of information of use to non-experts, such as information on the history of a chemical's use, regulatory information (including other countries where products are manufactured) and dissenting opinions about safety.

Overall it's a good book for a consumer audience with uses in an academic setting as well.

The Handbook of Trace Elements

By István Pais and J. Benton Jones, Jr.

Published by St. Lucie Press, 1997.

This is a hardcover book measuring just over 6" by 9" and running to 223 pages including the bibliography and index, plus a brief preface.

The preface begins:

This book summarizes, by element, 41 elements that are found in the environment (earth's crust, soil, water, plants, animals, and man) in relatively low (<0.1%) concentrations. These elements are generally referred to as trace elements or, for the seven trace elements essential to plants, micronutrients. In addition, there is a chapter on rare earth elements.

The information presented is factual and practical, covering chemical and biochemical applications of trace elements in hosticulture, agriculture, nutrition and medicine. The introductory chapter, which is 80 pages long, covers basic information on trace elements in soil, oceans, fresh water, etc.; information on the biological classification and function of trace elements; physiology of animals and plants; and trace elements in food and livestock feed. Other chapters are devoted to 41 trace elements by element, rare earth elements by element, plant micronutrients, soil testing for micronutrients, and procedures for testing for trace elements.

This is a compact, practical and fact-filled book, useful for people working in biology, medicine, nutrition, agriculture and food science.

Rules of Thumb for Engineers and Scientists

David Fisher, Editor.

Published by Gulf Publishing Company, 1991.

This is a slender, hardbound book measuring 6" by 9" and running to 242 pages including an appendix, bibliography and two indexes, plus a brief preface and introduction.

This is an unusual science reference book, because in science we are used to encountering hard facts. This book is a compilation of "rules of thumb," scientific "facts" on which scientists routinely use (albeit with caution) in going about their practical work which have never actually been proven. The preface says this:

In science, rules of thumb are poor relations of laws and, although useful, cannot always be depended upon. Perhaps because of this, there tends to be a marked reluctance to disseminate them widely. At the same time, they are frequently proposed in the literature. The present compilation is an attempt to begin to bridge this gap between supply and demand. It should not be assumed to be an exhaustive list of all the rules of thumb that have been discovered. Rather, it should be regarded as a "sampler" of such rules and is a miscellany of those I have found particularly useful or surprising.

The purpose of these rules of thumb is to help scientists and engineers estimate what will happen with the processes they're experimenting with.

Entries explaining these rules of thum range in length from a couple of sentences to over two pages. Understanding them requires knowledge of of chemistry and physics. Here is an example, just for fun:

DARZENS' RULE

It was suggested (Darzens, 1897) that:

L_e/T_b = f(T_b/T_c)

where L_e is the latent heat of evaporation, L_f is the latent heat of fusion, and T₁ is the temperature in degrees Kelvin at which the vapor pressure is equal to 1atm.

The appendix has handy tables of things like melting points, boiling points and critical temperatures of selected compounds and elastic moduli of metallic elements. The bibliography lists the works referenced as the original sources of the rules of thumb included in the book. The indexes include a general subject index and an index of independent variables used in the rules.

This seems to be a handy book for anyone working in a chemistry lab.