BioTech Lab Safety
This page should be merged with BioTech Lab. Please acquire all useful information from this page first but DO NOT DELETE.
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.
