So: I have a sprained toe (again) and a fairly recent dream where I had to get up at around 3am in the morning because a hurricane is blowing in and I had to save the flamingos by herding them into the shelter. I stayed (in the dream) until the (dream) morning and ended up having to drag a lot of giant tree bits out of the city hall / conference center place that the weather wrecked. On the plus side, this is far more interesting than dreaming about protein gels (which I did, before this). However, I haven't decided how I feel about the fact that flamingos have evidently infiltrated my subconscious.
And now we're going to move on to the lab safety portion, because as fascinating as my flamingo dream and oft-sprained toe are, they both kind of paled in comparison to real life, honest-to-goodness explosion.
Those of you who follow me on facebook have already heard that the neighboring lab had their biosafety cabinet exploded. For those unfamiliar with what a biosafety cabinet looks like, here are a few images -- it's a bit like a fumehood except a fumehood's main focus is keeping you safe from the chemicals, where as biosafety is to keep both you and your experiments (containing things from cells to tissue to infectious viral agents -- hence the term "biosafety") safe from each other. The explosion blew out the entire glass panel and charred the metal frame & shelf to a lovely black color, took out the biocabinet next to it as well as the nanodrop setup across from it and the combination of explosion and the sprinkler-flooded-shortage took out two fridges as well. Essentially that lab's whole tissue culture room (which in general tends to be small for containment reasons) is out of commission.
Here is what I have not mentioned:
1) Despite of the fact that it's a "neighboring lab", the way that labs set up in my lab building means that the wings are separated, but the labs themselves are joint space.
2) Due to how science is collaborative and we all share lab space, we share resources and equipment as well.
3) The only reasons there were no casualties are because the post-doc came in after hours (v. few others around) for a time point experiment (such as one I will be starting tomorrow) and had to borrow the microscope in OUR tissue culture room, tucked at the end of the north wing, to look at the cells. As in the cabinet exploded in his room while he was in our room. Otherwise he'd be RIGHT IN FRONT of the cabinet (see the google images with the researchers) when it exploded. Had there be anyone else in that room there'd be injuries because the room is TINY, okay? The nanodrop that I usually use is in that room. Had I be using it at the time I'd be about one foot away from the cabinet, with my back toward the giant thing of exploding glass. Everyone is EXTRMELY grateful that no one was actually injured because this could've ended so, so much worse.
4) The explosion is caused by a gas leak. There was a mild leak before so they called in the tech to fix it and that day was the day when the tech left announcing that everything had been fixed. The post-doc thought that he might've smelled leaked gas, but then he lit a bunsen burner anyway and then LEFT IT UNATTENDED in a CLOSED CABINET while he went to our room to check his cells.
One of the thinks that got drilled into me as an undergrad or-- even before that-- in my high school chemistry class, is that one should never, ever leave an open fire unattended. Even if you're just going to step out for a sec., TURN OFF THE FLAME. (If he did there wouldn't have been enough gas built up while there's an open flame for the explosion.) Sadly I often suspected that not many people actually retained what they learned in high school or undergrad classes, never mind they are science / pre-med majors and knowing proper lab safety procedures is very much relevant. In this case it also goes to prove that neither a doctorate or the required annual lab-safety training are guarantee against sloppiness (that's what a lot of sloppiness in lab comes down to -- a moment of laziness -- of using the same tips twice instead of changing it, not doing an extra sweep-down when handling radioactive isotopes, or not turning off the flame because you are only going to step away for five minutes, tops).
Some of the people, especially undergrads, tends to think I'm very harsh in my standards of what is and isn't acceptable in lab. The thing is, for all that science-majors have lab classes as part of their undergrad course work, in lab classes all the most hazardous things have already been dealt with and the students don't have to handle them directly. There are instructors and TAs whose whole purpose for those few hours is to keep an eye on you and there's a very limited protocol that everyone is working from. When you start working in lab, however, everyone has different experiments going on, sometimes at the same time. YOU are expected to keep an eye on what you're doing, there's no one to keep a constant eye on you because everyone has their own tasks. You will be handling things that are toxic, hazardous, flammable, carcinogenic, radioactive &c &c. Things can go wrong in a variety of ways that could cause seriously injury leading up to, yes, death.
Moreover, it is not only your own life that you are risking if you don't pay attention and screw up, but the lives of your lab mates as well.
Had that person did that experiment during daytime, when the lab is operating at full capacity, anywhere from two to ten people could've been caught in the backlash, and they could be some random person just popping in to grab a spare falcon tube, not even noticing what's in the biosafety cabinet.
I like to joke about how I'm overly-cautious, how paranoid. The truth is I don't think I'm paranoid at all. Paranoia implies an irrational fear and I believe that my caution is nothing if not rational.
So pay attention to safety training, exercise common sense, and be aware of your environment. We might not be able to to guarantee that everyone will do this 100% of the time, but we can at the very least try to do this ourselves 99.99% of the time and it's amazing how many disasters can be avoided that way. (And now I'm remembering that undergrad who stuck her head into the fumehood where she's doing something that gives off toxic fumes just ohGodwhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.) (She is now somehow a grad student. It is somewhat frightening.)
(An aside: when I stepped into lab that morning everything smelled of smoke and there was a cluster of men in blue uniforms blocking the way to the tissue culture room. I didn't know what was going on at the time and so asked one of the men, who told me, kindly, that "there was a small fire, don't worry about it." I found out about the explosion from my labmate when HE went by. I'm not sure if this is an issue of me being female and frequently mistaken for a freshmen or just that I asked the wrong man, but it was really frustrating anyway because I do, in fact, work in the smoke-filled north wing and one of the machines I regularly use is in the blocked off room and the power to half of the equipments I needed went out that morning so I think I have the right to know what's going on and oh God, sometimes the kindly ones makes me so much more resentful than the people who out and out dismiss me.)
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