General Lab Safety Considerations:

Common accidents in labs such as ours are caused by FALLS and MECHANICAL INJURIES:
Clean up floor spills
Pick up debris (pipette tips compete favorably with banana peels in tripping people)
Don’t climb on the furniture; if you need to recover an object that is placed out of reach use the kick-step or the ladder.

Things that SPIN, SHAKE, GRIND, RATTLE and CRUSH:
We use many instruments that have components that move at great speed or are capable of shearing, cutting and otherwise disrupting the integrity of tissues (including your tissues). The most common mechanism for serious injury is to have appendeges caught in these devices. Common sense is the most effective protection; but you should consider specifically the risks posed by loose clothing, rings, bracelets and even long hair (e.g. injury to scalp caused by hair being caught in a spinning centrifuge). Another common injury is from heavy objects falling on your feet. Wear appropriate shoes.

FIRE & CHEMICAL SPILLS:
We work with some nasty chemicals that may cause burns (e.g. acids, bases, denaturants such as phenol, etc). We also have open flames on some of our benches, which may ignite flammable chemicals. The lab environment also has certain explosion hazards from injudicious mixing of chemicals, capping of containers that should be left uncapped etc. Common sense is the most effective protection.
Familiarize yourself with the location of the lab’s EXITS, EYE WASH, SHOWERS, FIRE-EXTINGUISHERS, FIRE BLANKETS, HAZARDOUS SPILL CLEAN-UP KIT.
Take the online training for hazardous material handling.

Do not store flammable chemicals in our freezers or refrigerators; they are not explosion proof.
Finally, while not a life threatening problem, the lab environment poses a hazard to your clothing and possesions. The stains used to stain proteins in a SDS-PAGE gel, will do just as good a job at staining your leather jacket or hand-bag (which are made of protein). And most clothing is NOT acid resistant. Take this into consideration.

TOXINS, BIOHAZARDS & RADIOACTIVITY.
Exposure to these agents is carefully regulated by the University, which monitors our compliance with all applicable federal and local laws. But here too common sense is the most effective protection.
Wear a lab coat, gloves and other protective gear.
Wash your hands, as needed.
Don't eat or drink in the lab.
If you have young children at home that crawl on your floor, protect them from the stuff that collects on our floor by using special shoes at work.
We maintain copies of the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) on most of the chemicals in use in the lab. They are to be found in a black folder labelled "Chemical Safety" on the bottom left shelf in David’s Office.

We do NOT routinely work with human pathogens (infectious agents) in the lab, however we do grow pseudo-typed replication defective RETROVIRUSES that are capable, in theory, of infecting human cells. Procedures for dealing with this hazard are posted in the Tissue Culture lab and on our web site.

RADIOISOTOPES are used extensively in our work. We use 32P to label polynucleotides and proteins, 35S to label proteins and, rarely, 14C and 3H to label other organic molecules. Rivka Jungreis is our lab radiation safety officer and she conducts monthly surveillance checks of the lab, however, radiation safety is first and foremost the responsibility of the end user. We have no tolerance of lapses in radiation hygiene and insist that our lab should provide an essentially hazard free environment. Therefore, experiments with radioactivity must be carefully designed in consultation with a senior lab mate experienced in preventing the hazards of spills and contamination.

CRYOGENICS:
We have a large number of samples stored in liquid nitrogen and –80 deg C freezers. While these cold environments pose some hazard to the operator (which can be circumvented by gloves, safety glasses and careful planning), the greater risk is that posed by the inexperienced user to our valuable samples. Please consult the relevant web page to learn how to minimize that risk.