Team:Bielefeld-Germany/Safety

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Revision as of 20:56, 16 August 2012

1. Would any of your project ideas raise safety issues?

• researcher safety
• public safety
• researcher safety

For assuring the safety of the researcher every team member has to take part in special lab safety training. This training includes theoretical and practical parts where the team members learn how to handle (harmful) chemicals, rules for handling the setups and general safety regulations which have to be considered in the lab.

Further, everyone is required to be informed in detailed about the properties of every used chemical reagent. This implies that everyone has to read the R/S phrases and consider the recommended safety regulations.

To protect the researcher and the environment every person in the lab is required to wear safety clothes which implies long pants, closed shoes, a lab coat, safety glasses and when necessary gloves.

Other students and people without the authority and training do not have access to our iGEM lab. We take care that no materials which are biological modified leave the lab. In the case that samples, chemicals or something else need to be transferred to another room or even lab to continue an experiments we use special containers. For example, solvents are carried in baskets and samples in closed containers. Our project does not include the work with infectious organisms. Cell material can be thrown in the sink which includes a thermical disinfection system.

Also, we work with a number of harmful chemicals. These chemicals are stored in the lab regarding the safety regulations. Therefore, solvents are stored in explosion protected lockers and toxic chemicals are locked separately. Of course all chemicals are labeled adequate. Harmful chemicals, especially experiments which include the handling of solvents, are carried out under a fume hood. Experiments which require the protection from contaminations are carried out under a clean bench.

Some experiments are carried out in special areas in the lab or even in another room. One example is ethidium bromide which we mainly used for staining our gels. We only use the chemical in a special marked area of our lab and have separate equipment to prevent contaminations of other lab materials.

As already mentioned above, we also care about the environment. Therefore, all chemicals are disposed regarding their properties such as toxicity and explosiveness. All chemicals and chemically contaminated trash is disposed by the chemical disposal department. The department is also able to recycle solvents, such as ethanol and acetone (requires only a low grade of contamination). In this case we get the distilled solvents, labeled as technical solvents back in our lab and can use it for experiments or applications where the pureness is not a crucial factor.

In summary, we take care about the safety of ourselves, try to work as clean as possible and take care that the environment is protected as good as possible. The rules and safety measures we consider are standard at the Bielefeld University.

2. Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues? If yes,

• did you document these issues in the Registry?
• how did you manage to handle the safety issue?
• How could other teams learn from your experience?

3. Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

• If yes, what does your local biosafety group think about your project?
• If no, which specific biosafety rules or guidelines do you have to consider in your country?

4. Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?