Team:Rotterdam HR/Safety
Safety
General safety
With an idea that is meant for a safe work environment, we also need a safe product. To make that happen we started asking question to ourselves and others. On this page you will find the questions and answers we conquered on our journey to a safe by design product.
Before any lab work was done, the whole team received safety training from our advisor. We work in an ML-I lab, which is provided by the University of Rotterdam at the institute of Engineering and Applied Science. An ML-1 lab is equivalent to a BSL-1 space, which is considered the lowest level of microbiology laboratory biosecurity. In this lab we are only allowed to work with non-pathogenic microorganisms. For testing we used E.coli strains that were modified and are safe to use in a ML-I laboratory.
Safety while testing
One of the first questions we had was: How can we protect ourselves while testing our bacteria? To properly test our idea, we needed to work with carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Both gasses can be unsafe for the human body with certain concentrations. To make it safer for us, we used tanks that have a controlling system on it. By using this system, we could control the amount and concentration coming out of the tanks. To make sure nothing was leaking from the tanks we also got a carbon monoxide detector in the laboratorium. This device was turned on the entire period we worked in the lab. We first tested a few days straight the concentration present at the lab without any use of carbon monoxide. This data provided us with a Normal line. This line could be used to compare data with, when we worked with the carbon monoxide tanks.
Another way to protect ourselves was to make sure that even when there was carbon monoxide or hydrogen in the air, it would be cleared away as soon as possible. To do that we used the fume hoods which were present in our ML-I lab.
A safe by design idea
Since our idea is to make a detector that would be used in industry we had to think forward. What if we develop our project so well that it becomes a wanted product for companies? When we asked these questions, other questions about safety arised. What if our hardware breaks, will the bacteria break loose? And if they break loose what are the risks for the environment? Which requirements should be followed to make sure the detector is production worthy? And: How can we prevent that GMOs stay alive outside the environment that is made inside our product?
The company Buveco provided us with good requirements for our hardware. Our Electro Technicians made a peristaltic pump. This pump is used to pump the carbon dioxide, that is produced after detecting carbon monoxide, out of our product with a constant amount at a time. More about this pump can be found on the Hardware page. This helps with the safety because the gas won’t make contact with our hardware and measurements are accurate.
Another point for safety is optimizing and stabilizing the binding of carbon monoxide to the bacteria. In the image on the left, you can see the sollubility of carbon monoxide in water at several temperatures. For reading out the measurements we need to make sure we know how much carbon monoxide dissolves into the medium our bacteria live in. A constant temperature is desirable to stabilize measurements. As a solution, we made a temperature regulator.