When designing routes and selecting reagents, carefully consider the toxicity and safe handling of reagents.  Incorporating a potentially genotoxic intermediate into a route may be necessary to reduce the preparation time and cost of goods, thus outweighing the costs of handling and removing this intermediate from the product.  On the other hand, if pilot plant personnel are unwilling to sample a drum of a dangerous reagent prior to using this lot in pilot plant scale-up, this raw material should be avoided: use-tests of individual lots are essential before committing valuable time and materials to scale-up.  Consult with others on the toxicity and safe handling of reagents.