UW CHEMISTRY NMR

Dear NMR Community

If you are one among the many who are raring to go and pick up the research threads where we left it before the world turned upside down and use the wonderful tool called NMR from your tool kit, to continue your critical mission of answering important research questions,  I am totally in the same wavelength as you are and can’t wait to see the instruments being put to great use, before long.

Since a cautious but unmistakable pivot in this direction is felt both at the department level and the UW level,  I wanted to preemptively share the following thoughts on one topic that is of paramount importance, before we switch to a higher gear, when the time comes.  SAFETY IN OPERATIONS IN THE NMR FACILITY.

I am sure  formal, official and clear-cut recommendations for general operations, will be circulated by various authorities  when they deem the time is right.  But what follows is only in the purview of operations within the NMR lab.  All we staff who are charged with maintaining a safe NMR facility have been discussing and arriving at these consensus over the past couple of weeks.  We might add/revise these recommendations as warranted later :

• Social Distancing Norms need to be strictly adhered to, when you are in the NMR Lab.  By now it is a lore that a minimum of 6 ft.  distance between two people needs to be maintained at all times, to satisfy this requirement. 
• WE deem that, at any given time, not more than four persons should be in Room 37, Bagley Hall i.e. NMR lab, which includes the NMR users and up to two staff members.  
• Staff’s presence in the room will be limited to the following i.e. fix an instrument, cryogen fills or provide assistance to an existing user, when a need arises (occasional instrument tune-ups will also happen).
• We NMR Staff shall do all we can to plan our presence to satisfy the ‘max persons’ limit above. (For instance, we might plan our presence to fix an instrument, when there is not more than two occupants in the lab collecting data).    But, currently we are requesting the User base’s cooperation to do your part – please carefully look at the reservation calendar and plan your booking such that we do not exceed the ‘Max persons’ limit – as much as possible !  (We are not planning to enforce this, to begin with; but that might change based on ground observations )
• You bring ONLY your NMR sample tubes for your NMR lab visit.  NO Cell Phones, Headphones, Laptops or any other extraneous/personal items – NO EXCEPTIONS ! 
• Minimize your presence in the lab. FOR EXAMPLE,  if you are setting up a 13C run or similar long acquisition runs, start ‘zg’ and leave the lab.  Return only to collect your sample ( BUT DO THAT PROMPTLY. DON’T LEAVE THE TUBE TO BE HANDLED BY THE NEXT USER ; OUR GOAL IS TO MINIMIZE PHYSICAL INTERACTION)
• Currently we don’t have a mandatory recommendation for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as masks, but we do encourage you to use them if you can.   But, we are planning to provide ‘single use’  nitrile gloves for you to wear when you enter the NMR lab.  
• We learnt that departmentwide directives about the use of gloves both in your own labs and while arriving at the NMR lab, will be forthcoming, before the operations scale up.

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I know this is a lot to digest but the importance of these points cannot be overstated.

LET ME EMPHASIZE BEFORE I FINISH :  These are recommendations  we are making in anticipation of  increased research activity;  any department level communication such as from the Office of the Chair and/or UW level communication about the general operations might subsume the above and can even supersede these recommendations.

We shall be in constant touch with you about any changes that come our way. 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR AUDIENCE, PATIENCE AND COOPERATION.

NMR Facility Manager

5/25/2020