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 IS&T website)

11. EHS Rep Weekly Inspection • Occurs every Friday by our EHS Rep • See level 1 checklist at: http://web.mit.edu/environment/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 people’s experiments, solutions, reagents, etc.