Is there a consensus on Veeky Forums as to what to be really careful of while working in the lab?
There was mentioned earlier somewhere on this board a woman who died from spilling 2 drops of methylmercury on her lab gloves, and various anecdotal reports of people getting suffocated by fumes or burnt by fires. There was even a story I've read on here of someone who unplugged a freezer which ended up getting that user in a lot of trouble because it ruined some expensive biological specimens worth almost $100,000.
Apparently even liquid nitrogen tanks can be dangerous, there was an incident recently at Texas A&M where one of these exploded causing building damage but thankfully no one was hurt, pics here: imgur.com/a/I68rN Remember to always be careful around high-pressure containers.
I once broke a flask doing an acid-base titrate which could have resulted me on getting cut.
Jack Allen
>omeone who unplugged a freezer which ended up getting that user in a lot of trouble He deserved it. Fucking with a lab's freezer is fucking with its lifeblood
Andrew Jackson
>working in malaria lab freshman year >grad student who is my advisor is this real nice Egyptian man who likes to stay up late and have the lab to himself >because of this we start work at 8 pm and drink coffee and do experiments until 4 am >our project was testing a whole plant therapy on plasmodium falciparum rather than using a single compound >breed malaria that is resistant to every drug in the world >it's a bsl2 lab but I never wear goggles because I'm a jackass >working on blood culture of super malaria and transferring between eppendorf tubes
These tube caps are hard to open and sort of 'pop' really hard when they do open.
>open said tube one night and culture that have collected at the top of the tube splashes out and just throws human blood infected with super malaria across my eyeball >sit there for about thirty minutes in my chair while contemplating my choices in life
Ended up going to the doctor's which was funny. He was very sure that I could not get malaria this way but became progressively more and more concerned as he walked in and out of the room. I've worked in a lot of interesting labs and have nearly gotten fucked up in all of them. I'll be happy to share any stories
Bentley Perry
Another student came to the lab shitfaced and started doing IMVaC to test to see if she had purified some E coli, including working the burner. Didn't even tie her hair back.
Xavier Russell
>tfw almost joined a malaria drug discovery lab
kek dummy
freshman in my lab poured bleach down the drain after pouring hydrochloric acid (he was trying to kill e. coli in his flask), so in like 5 minutes i noticed my sinuses were burning from all the chlorine gas in the lab
"alright everyone go get lunch or some shit"
Matthew Perez
I don't know that someone could die from methylmercury on their gloves. It's effects are cumulative, but wearing gloves in the first place should negate it's absorption... right?
Eli Bailey
no glove is fully impermeable to all substances, that's why you pick the right glove for the right job
However, LN2 is supposedly the most dangerous lab chemical, killing most people not by explosions, but by asphyxiation. Sometimes it even forms a layer near the ground so when one person passes out and the other goes to help them they pass out too. It's a painless way to go and probably the best way to commit suicide in the lab.
Now if you go to an old(new world old 100 years) university, the chemical stores often have chemicals from a different time. Like old bottles of picric acid just waiting to blow you to bits.
Jackson Anderson
Dimethyl Mercury dissolves in and through typical organic lab gloves in seconds. It's like iodine getting absorbed from solution into the walls of a plastic bottle, but faster and very deadly (though slow to manifest).
Hunter Gutierrez
I found about half a kilogram of dry picric acid in a lab not in any way suited for handling explosives a few days ago. It's been sitting in a jar since the fall of the Soviet Union and nobody bothered to dispose of it or even just pour water into the jar.
Gavin Cooper
Was transporting a waste carboy between two carts to be purged and had the bottom crack clean off in my hand, cut the shit out of my fingers and got waste water all over myself. Had to wear the EHS officer's spare pants (he's a giant, i'm a wiry manlet) on the ride home and felt like fucking Jared Fogle post-diet.
Luke Lopez
Broken Centrifuge. Bored tech with tools "fixed" it. Centrifuge proceeds to rev up uncontrollably, explode. Steel pieces embedded in wall, tech clutching ears from bang that woke up people 100 feet away.
Joseph Hill
>He was very sure that I could not get malaria this way but became progressively more and more concerned as he walked in and out of the room This is the best and worst visualization
Happy you're okay user
Jason Fisher
This is my nightmare
Adam Long
Fucking electrophoresis probably gave me a bunch of different types of cancer.
Mason Morris
Mostly fucking cuntbags mopping floors while work is still going on. Goddamn.
David Bennett
In highschool my chemistry teacher burned a hole through his shoe and burned his pinky toe while showing us thermite I'm in electrical engineering now and some people in my class have had electrical "incidents"
Aaron Walker
>Apparently even liquid nitrogen tanks can be dangerous, there was an incident recently at Texas A&M where one of these exploded causing building damage but thankfully no one was hurt, pics here: That was a very poorly maintained canister. If anything, rather than walking on eggshells around liquid nitrogen like a pussy, what it means is that you have to make sure the safety valves are in working condition.
Also I don't see how the fuck you can die from spilling a few drops of methylmercury on your gloves.
David Baker
Pics or it didn't happen
Landon Thomas
I looked into it after thinking the same thing. It looks like in 1997 a researcher accidentally got a couple drops of dimethyl Mercury on her latex gloves. Unfortunately for her, latex does not provide sufficient protection as the Mercury can break through quite easily. Looks like specific types of nitrile or rubber gloves are required.
Ayden Cox
most dangerous thing i work with on a daily basis is high proof ethanol and razor blades. occasionally i have to use phenol or chloroform or acrylamide. worst thing i ever worked with though was EMS, a volatile mutagen i needed for a genetic screen.
Aaron Gonzalez
we do have some nastier stuff in the chem room though, like cell trafficking inhibitors and cytoskeleton disruptors and whatnot.
Justin Williams
>cellular irritants >not working with cyanide or high vapor pressure volatile halogens
Isaiah Diaz
I'll get some pics tomorrow. The jar is soaking in a bucket of water at the lab right now so it can be handled safely.
Jose Anderson
Biggest risk in most labs is asphyxiation from nitrogen or carbon dioxide. Second biggest risk is anything to do with pressure.
That's what has killed people in my company in the last ten years.
Oddball things include massive vasodilation from a biologic. Picomolar inhalation risk. People fainting at random was weird.
Noah Brooks
woah, vasodilation from picomolar concentrations of an airborne substance? what's the substance?
Parker Bennett
I can't give details because of commercial sensitivity, the stuff is now on the market and very effective at what it is supposed to do.
Brandon Perry
I suggest reading Ignition! It has multiple stories of interesting new properties of compounds being discovered via turning a lab's atmosphere/factory floor into pulverized glass/Pit o' chlorine trifluoride.
Michael James
I'm taking a look for it, but can't find it. Do you have an exact title?
Samuel Anderson
not him but this one seems like it Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
Eli Turner
>Preparing cigarette smoke extract >Start by inserting glass pipette into rubber stopper >Twist pipette into stopper so that it doesn't break like in the high school lab safety videos >Pipette breaks into thumb >Bleed all over the undergrad I'm sharing the hood with while she tries to do an RNA extraction for qPCR
I still have a scar.
Jack Foster
i hope i never get to use the ultracentrifuge
Brody Sanders
lmao
Gavin Scott
how do i dispose of distilled epichlorohydrin? can i be a brainlet and pour it down the drain with running water
Christian Allen
That high school lab safety video is a Soros psyop
Nathan Jenkins
>I've worked in a lot of interesting labs and have nearly gotten fucked up in all of them Maybe its time to start wearing PPE?
