Almost all laboratory work, regardless of the specific scientific field, involves use of some form of hazardous chemicals. All university science departments and industrial facilities in which such work is carried out require some level of training of those materials for their faculty and staff. However, the disposal and destruction of such chemicals is largely left to specially trained technicians, or more commonly these days to professional off-site facilities.

One of the best features of this book is that it only discusses the readily available equipment and procedures that are within the reach of most small and medium sized laboratories. Many elegant and effective methods have been left out due to their use of more specialized equipment, reagents, or biological cultures.

This book is written and organized as a textbook, which means its aim is to teach the techniques and the best practices, instead of just providing an encyclopedic list of those methods.

The book is divided into two main parts. The larger of the two deals with the specific methods for the destruction of hazardous chemicals. Here methods are chemical-dependent, and include methods for destruction of chemicals like arsenic, mercury, carbofuran, dyes and biological stains, organic nitrates, patulin, sodium amide, and many others. The second part deals with the destruction of specific pharmaceuticals, such as sodium hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide, fenton’s reagents, and several other chemicals and groups of chemicals. There is also a relatively brief section at the end of the book dealing with some nonspecific methods. Several appendices at the end give several useful indexes of molecular formulae, CAS registry numbers, and pharmaceutical names.

Overall this is a very useful and through textbook on a very specific and important topic. It can be used as a reference tool, and every laboratory technician would be well advised to obtain a copy.