Laboratory equipment can be dangerous if users are unaware of the potential safety hazard. Thus, we make sure our lab members know what’s happening in a machine (for example, electron current over 100v is running in a electrophoresis machine). Before the horseshoe crabs are saved, make sure no one is hurt.

Safety Considerations of our Project Design

Organisms:

We didn’t use any actual horseshoe crabs for our project and our work has been solely done solely on Bacteria E. Coli and Bacillus subtilis 3NA.
• Some strains of E. Coli can sometimes cause food poisoning. Considering the potential detrimental health effect, we used E. Coli strain DH5-alpha, which is unharmful for human.
• The other strain of bacteria that we frequently work with is Bacillus Subtilis 3NA, which is also not considered pathogenic to human.
• Our used plates are disposed in bio-hazard and our cell cultures are bleached to avoid the spreading of laboratory anti-biotic and bacteria.

Lab Safety:
Although we don’t wear lab coat and goggles for most of the time, we do have some rules on attire. We wear closed-toed shoes and wash our hands when we are about to eat or leave the lab.
In additions, we don’t eat/drink on the bench, we clean up the bench after each day and we never stick our fingers into a running gel.