BioTech Lab Safety
NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE LAB!
-Wear gloves when handling any chemicals, samples or reagents. This is often to protect the sample from you as much as to protect you from the sample.
-Splash proof safety goggles are recommended when working with acids, bases and oxidizers. There is an emergency eyewash kit next to the sink if you decide to ignore this recommendation.
-Close toed shoes are highly recommended. It is Florida, so you will have to weight the comfort of wearing sandals against the convenience of having toes.
-Lab coats are optional, but they make you look pretty fly.
-Heat protective gloves are kept near the autoclave. The most recent research suggests that autoclaved materials and boiled things are hot. Use the gloves or start building up your callouses.
-Wash your hands before you leave the lab space. Use a paper towel to turn off the tap to prevent recontaminating yourself.
-Never touch, taste or directly smell anything in the lab. This definitely applies to chemicals, equipment and samples. Use your own judgement when applying this rule to your lab mates.
-LABEL YOUR TUBES CLEARLY! An anonymous liquid has to be assumed potentially hazardous. Random culture plates and fungi will be assumed to belong to August. Unlabeled/poorly labeled tubes and samples are periodically purged. You have been warned.
-If you're not sure where to throw something away, contaminated liquid media gets bleached and sent down the drain. Other non-organic liquids should be sent down the drain with water. For solid waste, if at all questionable, it goes in the biohazard waste.
-Chemicals do specialized things that may not be entirely obvious. Ask someone who knows what they are talking about before working with any new chemical that isn't part of a lab standard kit.
