Team:RHIT/Safety
Safety
As with any project, safety is our top priority. We will employ standard protocols for safety in our lab to ensure that all risks are managed appropriately. Every team member has been briefed and trained in the safety practices involved with our project. Our lab is rated as Biosafety Level 1, which means we are running relatively low-risk procedures, but with any project, there are concerns to be addressed.
Chemical Risks
For our project, we will be using salts of heavy metals (cobalt and arsenic), which can be acutely toxic at a high concentration. The release of such metals after the experiment is also a risk since they can cause environmental problems. Our advisers, as well as the school's lab technician, are working with us to ensure proper care and disposal of anything that comes into contact with these metals. We only work with heavy metal solutions in a designated area and clean the area after work. Bleach is used for biohazard waste, and any material that came into contact with the heavy metal solutions (LB media, etc.) is disposed of in a special container.
Biological Risks
The only organisms we plan to use this summer are E. coli, specifically, DH5-Alpha and BL21(DE3) strains. DH5-Alpha is a strain specifically mutated for transformation efficiency and is RG1. BL21(DE3) is another RG1 strain, well suited for protein expression. With all of our potential strains being from Risk Group 1, there is little to no risk to us or the community of disease.
