Lab safety violations

[cbish]

Just wave through a couple of times and watch it. Obviously it doesn't take long. I'm quite skilled.

For my next trick, I'm going to catch a fired bullet in my teeth!

 

[wayrad]

You are heating a sealed tube in a flame. You clearly have stronger nerves than I do.

I've fixed broken mercury columns in thermometers by putting them in an ice/salt mix to get the mercury down into the bulb. Wonder if it works with the alcohol jobs? I've never tried.

 

[Wyvern]

Re: Re: Re: Lab safety violations

Gaak

That goes double for me. Fifty lashes with a wet noodle for you, Jon in London.

Oh, and stuff it!


I could tell you about a real doozy but, well, that wouldn't be right since it's in litigation.

Getting ill or injured is not fun at all - despite what a few people who are off on disability would have you believe. Weigh the risks. I would much rather take a few extra minutes of my day to take some simple precautions than to take a chance of having a mishap.

 

[Mr. Skinny]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Lab safety violations

That goes double for me. Fifty lashes with a wet noodle for you, Jon in London.

Oh, and stuff it!


I could tell you about a real doozy but, well, that wouldn't be right since it's in litigation.

Getting ill or injured is not fun at all - despite what a few people who are off on disability would have you believe. Weigh the risks. I would much rather take a few extra minutes of my day to take some simple precautions than to take a chance of having a mishap.

Please come work at my lab Wyvern. I bow down before you.

 

[Skeptoid]

Re: Re: Re: Lab safety violations

I don't work at all! They pay me to look like I'm working. It's the same thing, you figure out pretty quickly. Bare minimum performance, and you get paid the same as someone with words like "superior" on their yearly review.

I thought you said you broke your ass at work; performing the duties of pregnant women and women on maternity leave, wasn't it?

 

[Virgil]

A co worker of my forgot about heat of solvation and PV=nRT.

The safety shower was blocked because that is prime storage area.

The guy has been out of work for a calendar year. the MD won't let him come back until his skin closes up.

 

[Hamish]

During an experimental campaign a few years back, we started using a small bundle of radiochromic film pieces to capture a proton signal from a high powered laser experiment. After each laser shot, an experimenter would open up the film pack and look at the films. We got some very useful results.

Six months later, on a follow-up experiment we were told, before we started shooting the laser, that because we were creating proton beams, we ought to start checking things with a Geiger-Muller counter after each shot.

When we came to measure the activity of our film-pack, the GM counter went off the scale. After that we started putting it in a lead box for a couple of hours before anyone could touch it.

The radiation was predominantly alpha particles so we suspect no harm was done but I'm glad I was never the one in the previous experiment who opened the film pack!

 

[Shane Costello]

Anyone got a good centrifuge story? I've heard from people who knew people who worked somewhere else where someone didn't balance the centrifuge properly, and the thing ended up going at speed through a solid brick wall.

Originally posted by Crossbow:
People drink, then drive cars.
People sky-dive without the proper equipment.
People ride motorcycles without helmets.
People work on live electrical lines without checking to see if the power is off or not.
etc.

Lab workers are no exception either!

The difference being that with lab workers the negative results of risk taking mightn't be seen immediately. Silliness with carcinogens and mutagens would likely lead to cancer years or decades down the line (keep an eye on those gloveless Profs with their ethidium bromide).

Off the top of my head I can think of two possible martyrs to scientific research, Marie Curie to radium and Rosalind Franklin, the dark lady of DNA, to X-rays (apparently this is what caused her ovarian cancer). I wonder how many more there've been?

 

[Jon_in_london]

Anyone got a good centrifuge story? I've heard from people who knew people who worked somewhere else where someone didn't balance the centrifuge properly, and the thing ended up going at speed through a solid brick wall.

Havent seen that, but I have seen a large Beckman walking across the floor and a very pale postgrad gawping at it.

Stupidest thing I have ever done with a centrifuge:

It was a bench top jobby for pulsing down 1ml microfuge tubes that had been knocked up in the departments maintainance dept. It was originally a coffee grinder!

You didnt have to have the lid closed for it to spin. I put my tubes in and with my fingers still holding the top of the tube I pressed the 'on' button......ouch! Tore my glove and was a bit sore but really hurt self esteem!

 

[wayrad]

Havent seen that, but I have seen a large Beckman walking across the floor and a very pale postgrad gawping at it.

Stupidest thing I have ever done with a centrifuge:

It was a bench top jobby for pulsing down 1ml microfuge tubes that had been knocked up in the departments maintainance dept. It was originally a coffee grinder!

You didnt have to have the lid closed for it to spin. I put my tubes in and with my fingers still holding the top of the tube I pressed the 'on' button......ouch! Tore my glove and was a bit sore but really hurt self esteem!

Reminds me of my first lab job, longer ago than I care to remember. The prof and I were spinning something down in the teaching lab's horrible tabletop centrifuge; it had a poorly designed (or damaged, I don't remember) lid, which flew off in the middle of the run. Next thing I knew, I was UNDER the table with no clear recollection of how I had gotten there. I looked up, and there was my boss staring back at me from under the other side of the table. Whereupon we both went into fits of hysterical laughter. (I hope they retired that centrifuge, though.)

 

[Rolfe]

Anyone got a good centrifuge story?

Only the one I told on the previous page.

I had a biochemistry technician who deliberately jemmied the safety catch of the centrifuge so she could reach in and stop the rotor with her hand. When I protested, she said "I don't have time to wait for it to stop by itself." We had to replace the whole damn machine.

I can't say I've never stopped these things by hand myself though. There was a refrigerated centrifuge I used while I was doing my PhD work which had no lock. Even though someone stuck a cartoon on the wall above it, showing a technician being strangled by his tie caught in the works, I still meddled. Which is why you need the locks.

Rolfe.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Only the one I told on the previous page.I can't say I've never stopped these things by hand myself though. There was a refrigerated centrifuge I used while I was doing my PhD work which had no lock.

I would sometimes use a wad of tissue as brake on an old Sorvall with no lock. The tissue worked well because it didnt 'catch' like a hand or a glove would. The centrifuge had no brake and it look literally 30 minutes to come down from 14,000.

 

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by Jon_in_london:
It was a bench top jobby for pulsing down 1ml microfuge tubes that had been knocked up in the departments maintainance dept. It was originally a coffee grinder!

Ways to Overcome Budget Cuts in R&D #1: Appoint Macgyver (sp?) to the maintainence department.

Working in meat research involves the use of very sharp knives with protective gear in the form of chainmail gloves. It goes without saying that these aren't worn with the regularity required, so cuts aren't uncommon.

The most hilarious mishap occured when one girl managed to cut her finger while slicing some meat. Being of a highly squemish nature (her work was with burgers so she never had to set foot in or anyway near an abattoir) she promptly fainted. As it happened the other girl in the lab at the time (whose research was on the composition of frankfurters, making another production line virgin) got such a shock at seeing her companion lose consciousness that she too ended up out cold on the floor. Luckily they were discovered by a battle hardened veteran of on-site sampling!