Regulations and Safety Precautions

This laboratory and its equipment are used by you and many others. Because you will be handling infectious materials, it is to the advantage of you and the others around you to carefully observe the following rules and precautions:

1. Always wear your lab coat fully buttoned, legs and arms must be fully covered. Hair must be tied back away from the face. Gloves must be worn while handling any potentially hazardous material, e.g. patient samples, cultures, contaminated equipment and chemicals. Footwear must fully enclose the foot, have low or no heels, and be made of an impermeable material.
2. Handle infectious material with care to avoid spilling, splashing, breakage or transferring infectious material when in the lab. Be aware of what you have handled and whether your gloves may be contaminated. Do not contaminate your hands, hair, clothes, worksheets, textbooks or the work bench. If you happen to spill or break material containing microorganisms, immediately call an instructor to help you deal with the situation.
3. Do not lay tubes or pipettes containing bacteria on the bench or work area. Always carry test tubes in a test tube rack. Never pick up a test tube by the lid. Remove pipettes, sticks or swabs from their containers only when you are ready to use them. Do not place the lids for these containers on the counter. Used pipettes, sticks and swabs are discarded in the biohazard disposal containers on the bench. When discarding the bags lining these containers, carry the container to the large biohazard bucket and then transfer the bag with its contaminated contents to the yellow bucket.
4. Always sterilize your wire loop and\or straight wire in the micro-incinerator before and after using them. Do not set them down if they have not been sterilized.
5. Do not moisten anything with your mouth.  Use tap water instead.
6. Do not insert anything in your mouth while in the lab.
7. There is absolutely no smoking, eating or drinking of any kind allowed in the lab (including candy, throat lozenges and/or gum). Cosmetics (e.g. lip balm) may not be applied in the lab.
8. Protect cuts and scratches on your hands with a Band-Aid.
9. Gloves should be changed regularly when handling potentially hazardous material and within twenty-five minutes of handling bleach. Always scrub your hands thoroughly with soap and water after removing gloves and before leaving the laboratory.  Hand-sanitizer is also available in the lab to use between changing of your gloves.
10. Maintain distinct “clean” and “dirty”/” contaminated” areas at your workstation. The work area must not become cluttered with unused textbooks, papers, personal items, etc. Place unnecessary items in the cupboard below your work area or leave them in your locker.
11. Your workspace is equipped with a basket of supplies, including a pen, pencil, ruler and permanent marker. These supplies are considered to be “dirty” and must not be removed from the lab.  Any pens, pencils, rulers or markers that are brought into the microbiology lab and used by students will be classified as “dirty” and will be added to the supplies in the baskets. These cannot be removed from the lab thereafter.
12. You are required to disinfect benches and other lab surfaces with 0.5% hypochlorite after work is completed. For proper disinfection at the end of the lab period, the work area should be squirted with properly diluted bleach and then remain wet for a minimum of 10 minutes before the bleach is wiped off with a paper towel.
13. All cultures, as well as contaminated gloves and equipment, are discarded in biohazardous waste with the exception of contaminated sharps which go into the sharps containers located in the fume hoods. There is a discard box for uncontaminated broken glass at the front of the lab.
14. Micro-incinerators should be handled by the base only. The element is very hot and will cause burns if you touch Micro-incinerators must be turned off and unplugged at the end of each lab period.
15. Do not use flammable chemicals such as alcohol or acetone in the immediate proximity of heat sources such as micro-incinerators. Also keep rubber hoses, electrical cords, microscope covers, paper tissues, etc. away from heat sources.
16. Refer to the Health and Human Services Department Medical Laboratory Technology Program Safety Manual  for more details regarding safety in student labs.