Around 2,000 owners of Sciex mass spectrometers received notice this month that they needed to immediately stop using the devices.
According to a report in Chemical and Engineering News, the notice warned that a malfunction in the spectrometers could “result in serious injury or death.”
The notice pertained to the API 4000, API 4000 Qtrap and API 5000 model mass spectrometers. The problem is in the old TV801 turbo pumps, manufactured by Agilent Technologies (and now obsolete), which can fragment and be ejected at high speeds. The pumps are responsible for making a negative pressure in the spectrometer’s vacuum chamber.
In general, spectrometers are used in academic and industrial settings to measure the masses and relative concentrations of atoms and molecules. For example, materials chemists use the device to understand the precise chemical composition of samples.
The company decided to send word of the problem after two catastrophic failures with the pumps. Luckily, no one was injured.
Both of the pumps in the accidents were made in 2002. Since then, the design has been updated and redesigned with new bolts added.
Spectrometers with the updated pump can cost up to $26,000. Sciex stated that the affected spectrometers will need to be shut down until it can send out a repair kit.
An academic source quoted in C&EN said that not using the Sciex spectrometer could cost his department, which uses the device to sift through tissue samples for compounds to make drugs, thousands of dollars every day in revenue.