Filters

Seems like I get in a blogging mood whenever I get back from a walk. Just got back from a 14km one (up the plateau too, mind you) to the GAW lab. I know...drive there 3 or 4 times a week for work, then walk there for "fun" on the weekend. I'm a little crazy. I did have to restart the flame on the Gas Chromatograph, so I was able to put in a little overtime (unfortunately not for travel time as well :P ).

This weekend I'll talk a bit about my Monday tasks, which involve changing many of the filters around the lab. The mechanics behind all the instruments is relatively similar: air is pulled in from outside, passed through a filter, then the filter is removed and analyzed. They all do it in a different way though, with different filters looking for different atmospheric constituents, from soot and carbon particles to toxic organics. We even have a radiation sampling kit ready to go in case there's a nuclear event somewhere in the world (e.g. Chernobyl) in order to observe how the particulate moves throughout the atmosphere.

Like with the flasking, we collaborate with several different organizations all around the world. The filters that I'm responsible for changing are: Toxics (first two pics, filter and housing), Hi-Vol (orange box), PS-1 (filter), PSAP (ready to be changed) and Aethelometer.Much like flasking, there are very specific guidelines that must be followed in terms of glove changes, sterility and procedure. The first week was overwhelming, but it sorts itself out pretty quickly. All the changes are on different schedules, so there are some Mondays that have more work than others. Occasionally, you have to do a "blank", which consists of putting on a filter using standard practices, and then taking it right off again without sampling anything. This allows the filter to be analyzed for contamination introduced by the operator (aka: me).

Well, that's filters in a nutshell. I guess next weekend I'll talk about some of the other miscellaneous stuff that happens up at the lab and here at work, and then I'll be fresh out of new information for you guys. Don't worry, there's always something wild and crazy going on up here that I can write about.

Only 5 weeks left!
Graham