Team:RHIT/Safety
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Safety
Our team always makes sure to wear protective attire in lab. We always wear shirts that cover our shoulders and stomachs, as well as pants and close-toed shoes. When we are in the lab, we tie our hair back and wear lab coats and gloves to protect ourselves. When entering and before leaving the lab, we wash our hands thoroughly to minimize the possibility of contamination.
Click on the lab pictures below to go through the safety slide show
When working with any living material in lab, proper safety is unquestionably one of the most important concerns. Our lab is a biosafety level 1 facility and comes with several features to keep us safe when working with our samples. Click on the pictures to go through some of our safety features.
Our freezers store biological substances and can keep them usable. Our lab has a 4°C fridge, -20°C freezer, and -80°C freezer. We store plates, glycerol stocks, antibiotics, and more in our fridges and freezers.
Biohazard bags can be found throughout our lab to allow for safe disposal of pipette tips, small tubes, and other biohazardous materials. When the bags are full, they are closed and placed into the biohazard bin. We also have an aqueous waste bottle to dump our liquid waste that cannot safely be poured down the sink.
We have a large biohazard bin where any material that was living or as touched something living can safely be placed. After the bin is filled, the contents are autoclaved to eliminate any additional living material. We also have a sharps container next to the biohazard bin so if any glass breaks, we can put it in a safe place without risking our safety or the safety of the janitors who take out our trash.
All the chemicals we use in lab are stored in safe bottles. We also keep them put away in glass cabinets so they are both out of the way when we are working at the lab benches and so they do not spill on us or our work. Keeping them closed and put away also protects our chemicals from contamination.
Next to the door, we have our eyewash station and emergency shower in case of chemical spills. The emergency gas shut off is also next to the main door, along with a list of phone numbers for the police, ambulance, poison control, and other numbers we hope not to need to use.
Our fume hood helps in the lab if we would need to work with any hazardous materials by containing dangerous liquids and gases and ventilating the hood to push dangerous substances into the exhaust system.
Our UV transillumniator helps us look at the DNA bands after running gel electrophoresis. It comes with a protective cover to shield us from the UV light when looking over it at the gel or when taking pictures. We also have a face mask to protect from UV light and radiation when looking at gels.
Our lab coats stay inside the lab at all times to minimize any contamination into or outside the lab. Our coats and our protective glasses are right inside the door so we can put them on when we enter the lab to protect ourselves.
Our first aid kit is easily visible and available should any minor injuries or cuts occur in lab. In this picture, you can also see the sink and soap we use to wash our hands when entering and leaving the lab.
All members of our team completed safety training during our first week of summer work. We learned general safe lab practices, ways to protect ourselves from our bacteria, and ways to protect our bacteria from us. We also learned aseptic technique to minimize the risk of contamination. We had MSDS pages readily available to check the dangers of our materials throughout our project, but no material we worked with presented any red flag dangers. Some materials, such as PET and terephthalic acid, can be hazardous if ingested, but since we do not plan to ingest anything in lab since we do have proper safety training, we do not see ingestion hazards as being a major danger during our project. Our chosen chassis is E. coli, which is a biosafety level 1 organism.