u/chocotacogato

I was initially hired to GCMS and HPLC for my position. We’ve received an HPIC Integrion later on which I’ve been so happy to work on to learn a new instrument. Unfortunately, things get busy on the GCMS/HPLC side and we don’t use HPIC for a lot of projects. I feel like HPIC has fallen on the back burner as a result of the demands of my job. No one touches the instrument when I’m away either, which I later learned was a big no-no for HPIC. Lately, I’ve found carryover/contamination in some of my runs and I haven’t been able to figure out why. Part of the reason is the nature of my work and I think the stress/overwhelm from my job is also clouding my judgement. I’ve been able to figure out the following with what I know but I cannot come to a conclusion yet:

1. The peak shows up in almost every run, even after equilibriating the system for more than an hour.
2. I do see carryover of other analytes in my runs, but they are so small, the results are practically zero. And they don’t show up as frequently as sodium. The sodium is the only thing that remains consistently present.
3. We hand wash a lot of glassware. I suspect the contamination is from the injection side or sample prep. Sometimes, we use salt for certain extractions

for GC

1. and I do think

that people leave salt on the bench at times

1. . It’s hard to say if we rinse the glassware efficiently enough because everyone washes and rinses differently. I even prerinse my glassware

with 18 M Ohm water too

1. . I also tried to fill deionized water in a glass bottle that’s

2. for single use purposes and

I

1. still see the peak in my runs.

I know sample storage isn’t always recommended in glass… but we don’t have much else at the moment.
4. My method is calibrated to Push Full at the moment. I have considered doing Push Partial but I haven’t had the time to look into it.
5. We used to run an end method with high eluent concentration and still saw the sodium peak when starting a new sequence.

I have an environmental science degree but struggled to find an environmental job after graduating 12 years ago. My internship didn’t give me an offer unfortunately because I guess I wasn’t a like-able person who asked enough questions at the time. I made the mistake of rejecting an offer from my former professor because I thought that if you said yes to one offer, you couldn’t change your answer. I am neurodivergent, had poor people skills back then, and I didn’t know how to say no to my older sister who thought she was doing the nice thing by hooking me up to what turned out to be an awful internship. (That’s a whole other story that I won’t get into unless asked).

I was able to switch gears and transfer what I learned to move on to flavors and fragrances. I thought about going back to school for public health for a long time but I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to go back because of the burnout I’ve dealt with my old jobs and because my GPA was mediocre at best. 12 years have passed since graduation day and I still feel like I’d like to study Public Health. But I know things are not great in the US and the field is extremely broad. I live down the road from a few college campuses. I think I could PROBABLY do it. Especially now that I know what was holding me back when I was younger. I still got some other things to figure out as well.

I wouldn’t mind being an analytical chemist in that industry (if that’s a thing) since I love how hands on the work is and that I’m not always tied to a desk. But I don’t want that to be my only job prospect. Just curious to know what parts of my background I could use that would help me feel confident about my decision to make a shift.