Team:RHIT/Safety
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Safety
When working with any living material in lab, proper safety is unquestionably one of the most important concerns. Our lab comes with several features to keep us safe when working with our samples.
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.
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.
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.
Please visit the Safety Hub to find this year's safety requirements & deadlines, and to learn about safe & responsible research in iGEM.
On this page of your wiki, you should write about how you are addressing any safety issues in your project. The wiki is a place where you can go beyond the questions on the safety forms, and write about whatever safety topics are most interesting in your project. (You do not need to copy your safety forms onto this wiki page.)
Safe Project Design
Does your project include any safety features? Have you made certain decisions about the design to reduce risks? Write about them here! For example:
- Choosing a non-pathogenic chassis
- Choosing parts that will not harm humans / animals / plants
- Substituting safer materials for dangerous materials in a proof-of-concept experiment
- Including an "induced lethality" or "kill-switch" device
Safe Lab Work
What safety procedures do you use every day in the lab? Did you perform any unusual experiments, or face any unusual safety issues? Write about them here!
Safe Shipment
Did you face any safety problems in sending your DNA parts to the Registry? How did you solve those problems?