Posted on: 10/07/23

Recently, a laboratory incident occurred at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, where more than 20 years' worth of valuable research was lost due to a freezer being switched off by a cleaner who wanted to silence the ‘annoying alarm’. To compensate for this irreversible damage, the university filed a lawsuit and is seeking more than $1m in damages.

As a laboratory temperature monitoring solution provider, we were disappointed to hear of this incident, particularly because it could have been avoided. While the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute did put into place a safety lock prior to the laboratory incident, that did not prevent interference with the circuit breakers, which is what caused the damage to occur.

Had the institute had a temperature monitoring system in place, the laboratory team would have had time to rectify the situation and save the affected samples. Specifically, what the institute needed to implement in their laboratory equipment was a temperature excursion alert system as well as a UPS backed-up solution. Our laboratory monitoring system includes both these features, alerting authorised personnel, in a variety of ways, as soon as a change in temperature occurs. Additionally, having a UPS backed-up system and data loggers means that even in the event of power failure, the sample storage unit could still run, keeping the samples at a safe temperature while the alarms alerted the team.

Our systems are designed with contingency in mind, so if you are looking for a temperature monitoring solution that can withstand these kinds of laboratory incidents, get in touch: