Ashland Toxicology majors spend summer internship at the Lubrizol Corporation

This is the second summer in a row that Ashland University Toxicology majors have spent their summer as paid interns at specialty chemicals producer Lubrizol in Northeast Ohio.  The Product Safety and Compliance department where they worked is managed by one of our Toxicology alumna, Karen Jordan '00.  Here is a report from one of those students, Abigail Culver, pictured to the right with fellow Tox major Jordin Vidmar.

During the summer, I was one of two Toxicology Interns at The Lubrizol Corporation in Wickliffe, Ohio. The Toxicology team is a small group within the Product Safety and Compliance department so I actually had the opportunity to work with different teams and learn more about their areas of work. Most of my time, however, was spent working on a project with the Toxicology team. The main goal of this project was to determine ways to improve their reproductive toxicity testing strategies and to find an easier way to classify chemicals as a reproductive hazard. For this project, I spent a lot of time data mining and pulling information on chemicals with reproductive studies. Once I collected all of the data, I had to restructure it in order to analyze possible trends that might lead to classification. I also had the opportunity to work on a small project with the Hazard Communication team to update reproductive classifications on their chemical log. I looked for discrepancies between their classifications and the Global Harmonizing System classifications, and then read through studies to decide whether or not reproductive classification should be adopted. During my time at Lubrizol, I also had the opportunity to shadow people from other departments and learn more about the chemical industry which was a really eye-opening experience. This internship showed me the non-laboratory side of Toxicology as well as gave me real-life applications of topics that I have learned about in classes. I learned so much during my time there and had the opportunity to meet so many new people. I am so grateful for my experience and would recommend this internship to anyone interested in Toxicology!