Under normal circumstances, the 270 gallons of alcohol from the Old Town Distillery in Saginaw, Mich., would have been used for liquor. Instead, lab workers at Saginaw Valley State University, located just under a two hours’ drive north of Detroit, are using it to help make 300 gallons of hand sanitizer.
As coronavirus fears spread across the United States, hand sanitizer flew from store shelves as fast as it could be restocked. According to The New York Times, the pandemic had caused a nationwide shortage, and prices were hugely inflated.
Matthew Kline, who manages the Independent Testing Laboratory at SVSU, says his lab is just finishing up the 300 gallons, having produced about 75 gallons a week since the distillery’s donation in early April. All the while, he and other lab workers have been doing their best to follow social-distancing guidelines and stay safe, he says. The free sanitizer is being distributed to essential workers through the Michigan Health Improvement Alliance.
Chemists at other college laboratories are also working to help fill the demand. At Louisiana State University, Anthony Mai, a chemistry Ph.D. student, and John Pojman, chair of the chemistry department and Mai’s adviser, helped oversee the formulation and production of thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer at a correctional-center warehouse in late March. Pojman said in a university news release that mass production was a change of pace from what normally takes place in a college chemistry lab. “Mixing 670 gallons of liquids and assuring uniformity is completely different than what we do in a research lab, where we will typically deal with 100 milliliters at a time,” he said.
And the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s School of Pharmacy, created more than 3,000 12-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer in two and a half weeks for UW Health, and is now expanding to produce more for campus emergency operations and other essential services.
How is your institution contributing to the “war effort” against the coronavirus? Tell us here.
