Lab-Specific Training

1
Lab-Specific Training

• Personal Protective Equipment
• Safety glasses should be worn at all times
• You might be safe, but how safe is your
  neighbor???
• Gloves should be worn most times
• Protection of self from biohazards
• Protection of experiments from human-hazards
• Lab coats provided, but optional
• Recommend wearing for handling of hazardous
  materials (e.g. Ethidium Bromide)

2
Good Microbiological Practices

• Work with live cultures is permissible on open
  bench (BL1)
• For sterility
• Should be in Biosafety Cabinet, or
• Near open flame on benchtop
• Handle open cultures as little as possible
  outside of BSC
• Always wear gloves when working with cultures.

3
Waste Disposal

• Separate liquid and solid waste
• Biohazardous Waste
• Will comprise most of our waste
• Most routine items (pipets, pipet tips, microfuge
  tubes, loops, spreaders, agar plates, etc) will
  be solid biohazardous waste
• Dispose of in white cans or small clear benchtop
  bags
• Small amounts of liquid okay
• Clear benchtop bags should be placed in white
  cans when full.

4
Waste Disposal

• Biohazardous Waste (cont.)
• Gels should be disposed of in the special black
  container dedicated to gels
• Other waste should not be placed here.
• Liquid biohazardous waste (cultures) must be
  decontaminated prior to disposal
• Shake flasks, large numbers of tube cultures,
  etc.
• 10 bleach
• Autoclaving
• Decontaminated waste can be sewered (disposed of
  in the sink).

5
Waste Disposal (cont.)

• Chemical Waste
• Solid chemical waste can be disposed of with
  biohazardous waste.
• Separate basic, acidic, organic, and oxidizing
  liquid waste (more on this next slide).
• Liquid waste containers kept in the fume hood.
• Mixed Waste
• Bio designation takes priority except with
  volatile organics
• May need separate containment for mixed

6
Chemical Waste

• Four Chemical Waste Containers
• Alkaline Aqueous Waste For pH 7 solutions
  that are not oxidizing or predominately organic.
• Acidic Aqueous Waste For pH 7 solutions that
  are not oxidizing or predominately organic.
• Organic Waste For waste that is predominantly
  organic in nature (ethanol, acetone, butanol,
  etc.), except for waste containing strong
  oxidizers.
• Oxidizer Waste For waste containing any amount
  of a strong oxidizer (hydrogen peroxide,
  permanganate, chromates, nitric acid, etc.).

7
Sharps Waste

• Big red buckets in lab for large sharps
• Next to biosafety cabinets
• Should mostly be pipets (long plastic ones,
  tips), syringes
• Non-sharps should go in biohazard cans
• Non-hazardous material (e.g. paper towels,
  printer paper, clean pipet wrappers) should go in
  standard bins

8
Final Notes

• To be safe, you must be aware of your
  surroundings.
• Assume any new chemical is unsafe until you find
  out otherwise.
• Assume any material to be discarded is hazardous
  unless you know otherwise.

9
Miscellany

• Storage of chemicals should be in common area,
  not on personal benches/shelves.
• Remember to keep orders/packing slips
• HOUSEKEEPING more important as lab becomes more
  crowded.

10
SECURITY

• The outer lab door should ONLY be unlocked if
  there are 2 people in the lab.
• Both the lab AND office doors should be locked at
  night.
• YOUR LAPTOPS MUST BE DOUBLE-LOCKED!!!
• Laptops should be backed up regularly (register
  on IST website)

11
EHS Rep Weekly Inspection

• Occurs every Friday by our EHS Rep
• See level 1 checklist at http//web.mit.edu/envir
  onment/ehs/rep_tools.html

12

• Be CAREFUL and use COMMON SENSE!
• KNOW what you are working with
• LABEL especially when using common areas
• CLEAN up common areas immediately and
  periodically maintain your lab bench
• Be RESPECTFUL of other peoples experiments,
  solutions, reagents, etc.