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Team:Acton-BoxboroughRHS/Safety
From 2014hs.igem.org
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<h style="font-size:25px;font-family:Arial">In the 3A Assembly</h> | <h style="font-size:25px;font-family:Arial">In the 3A Assembly</h> | ||
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| - | Before each session, we had to clear our workspace | + | Before each session of the 3A assembly lab, we had to clear our workspace of any equipment that may cause injury, obstruction of a normal lab workspace, discomfort of the lab runners, and generally, other laboratory labs that we did not want to disturb. With a cleared workspace checked, we washed down the work space with seventy-percent ethanol alcohol. This would ensure the existence of any microorganisms pre-existing in our workspace will not contaminate our apparatus and samples directly, or indirectly by means of secondary chemicals. Also, specific measure were taken so that the E. coli bacterium and other laboratory substances such as enzymes, buffers, or distilled water do not improperly escape into the environment, regardless of how it was used; if it was part of the lab or in the laboratory workspace, then it must be disposed of properly. This process includes properly disposing and ensuring proper post-treatment of pipette tips after every use of a unique substance to prevent cross-contamination of any substances and waste products. Members of our laboratory were required to wear surgical gloves when transferring materials to apparatus such as agar plates, glass test-tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, etc. Gloves were also worn when handling such substances directly such as sterile glass beads, in order to reduce in-lab contamination and possible external leakage. |
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Revision as of 03:34, 10 June 2014
Safety is an important process while doing laboratory work in order to stop cross-contamination, and keep the safety of our team members and others. Also, we kept the safety of the delicate environment in mind when disposing and handling certain substances.
Before each session of the 3A assembly lab, we had to clear our workspace of any equipment that may cause injury, obstruction of a normal lab workspace, discomfort of the lab runners, and generally, other laboratory labs that we did not want to disturb. With a cleared workspace checked, we washed down the work space with seventy-percent ethanol alcohol. This would ensure the existence of any microorganisms pre-existing in our workspace will not contaminate our apparatus and samples directly, or indirectly by means of secondary chemicals. Also, specific measure were taken so that the E. coli bacterium and other laboratory substances such as enzymes, buffers, or distilled water do not improperly escape into the environment, regardless of how it was used; if it was part of the lab or in the laboratory workspace, then it must be disposed of properly. This process includes properly disposing and ensuring proper post-treatment of pipette tips after every use of a unique substance to prevent cross-contamination of any substances and waste products. Members of our laboratory were required to wear surgical gloves when transferring materials to apparatus such as agar plates, glass test-tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, etc. Gloves were also worn when handling such substances directly such as sterile glass beads, in order to reduce in-lab contamination and possible external leakage.
At the time of the project, we will have specific safety protocols. This includes having a maximum of 5 people in our small lab space at a given time, a specific period at the end of each session to record what we did and to recognize what we'll have to do next, and a proper disposal protocol (such as discarding pipette tips, cleansing the wrokspace, and washing hands).
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