Safety
Being safe in the lab is of utmost importance to us in the Magi.Coli team. We work in a PC2 space so whilst we are working with a relatively safe organism (cannot propagate outside of lab conditions and has a very low-likelihood of infecting immune-competent individuals) we still have to be careful to not contaminate ourselves with the organisms our colleagues are working on!
Before even stepping foot into the lab we needed to complete an online training course on PC2-level safety procedures to learn about topics including biological/chemical waste management, hazard identification and reduction, safe use of equipment, and emergency evacuation procedures. We then all underwent an in-person induction to confirm our knowledge of safe-work procedures, appropriate use of PPE, and safe use of the specific equipment available in our lab
Every day we go into the lab to do our work we need to be aware of the risks we undertake and how to prevent them using the following safe-work practices:
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): As soon as we enter the lab we don our own lab coat, safety glasses, and gloves. Gloves must be worn while touching anything in the lab not in a designated ‘green zone’.
- Green zones: Green zones in the lab are specific sterilised areas for us to keep things we do not want to get contaminated such as our lab book. Gloves are not allowed to be worn when interacting with objects in green-zones to keep them contaminant free.
- Ethanol sterilising surfaces: Before and after lab work is conducted on an open bench, surfaces must be sterilised with ethanol or F10SC.
- Using Bunsen burners to create sterile environments: When conducting microbial work on an open bench, a Bunsen burner is turned on to create an updraft, keeping the area sterile and preventing cross-contamination.
We do a lot of potentially hazardous things every day, here’s a list of some of our most common risks and how we mitigate them:
Our unique risks
Our project involves the synthesis of a restricted substance, psilocybin. The first step in making sure we were being safe and complying with our state and university regulations was to notify them and get appropriate licensing for production and possession of psilocybin and its intermediates, norbaeocystin and baeocystin. Sam Bannister from the Lambert Initiative helped our supervisor Nick Coleman with the paperwork required by the NSW Government. A copy of abridged versions of the approval papers from the NSW Government and from our university.
Additionally, it has been incredibly important to us that we're all aware that working with this restricted substance comes with its own unique set of risks:
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- Risk: Accidental ingestion or overdose
- Safety behaviour: In terms of acute lethal toxicity, psilocybin is a relatively safe drug. An average adult would need to ingest about 20 grams for a lethal dose, which equates to 17 kg of bacterial cell pellets, which equates to approximately 10,000 litres of culture. Even for a psychoactive dose an individual would need to consume about 20 mg of psilocybin, which equates to one litre of raw culture. As students are instructed not to consume any substances produced or contained within the lab it is extremely unlikely that this risk would eventuate, especially as we only plan on making at maximum one litre of culture at a time.
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- Risk: Legal risks if our organism was not contained under NSW law - i.e. individuals without appropriate licensing could either inadvertently or deliberately posess our psilocybin containing E.coli.
- Safety behaviour: our organism is contained within our lab using biosafety procedures. Students are not allowed to take culture out of the lab, and hands are washed and garments removed to prevent any accidental transfer of our organism to the outside world.
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- Risk: Security and safety risks such as theft or illicit use.
- Safety behaviour: Our lab floor is key-card restricted to only researchers who work within the building, and the lab itself is further restricted to only individuals working on our floor. All entries and exits are logged so any theft would be easily caught and the culprits identified. Students are also instructed not to bring any visitors into the lab space, especially when we are working with restricted substances.
We have also performed a literature review on the risk our final product - psilocybin - would hold within the community were it to be released as a therapeutic. Please see our page: Human Practices - Safety of Psilocybin for more information.