Difference between revisions of "Team:Uppsala/Safety"

Safety is very important when working in a laboratory. For this we had an organized tour of safety by a lab technician before lab work started to make sure everyone knew how to behave safely in the laboratory. The demonstration tour included how to handle waste, safety hoods, fire safety, emergency exits, biosafety and how to protect yourself while working in the lab, such as wearing lab coats and gloves/safety glasses when needed. All single use lab material such as pipette tips, plastic loops etc were disposed in special hazardous waste containers. To make sure medium as well as lab equipment was sterile we used autoclavation. Since the machine operates under high pressure and temperature we limited the risk of accidents happening by only letting certain people from the team operate the machine. The lab was a restricted area where only the team and certain university personnel had access to. All chemicals were stored in a locked room in alphabetical order and the lab was checked and locked at the end of each day to make sure everything was in order.

When working with class 1 bacteria it is important to consider the potential harm it can cause, both towards the students and the environment. That why we had several precautions to make sure the risk was as limited as possible. The lab worked in is classified as biosafety level 1. This allowed us to work with non-pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli TOP10 and BL21(DE3)*. To limit the spread of bacteria in the lab, 70% ethanol was frequently used on benches and other surfaces as well as the lab crews hands to disinfect. This way the bacteria is killed off straight away and its risk of spreading both in the environment and in us is reduced. All liquid bacterial cultures and LB/SOB that may have been contaminated were treated with “Jodopax”, which is an iodine rich substance that kill bacteria. The Jodopax was left in the bacterial solution for at least 1h before disposing of it in the sink. All glass pipettes used were put into buckets with “Virkon” solution to ensure sterilization. They were left in the buckets for at least one day.

When working with phages we kept to a single fume hood. We had designated equipment for working with the viruses, and we wiped surfaces with chloroform.