- Don’t eat, drink, prepare or store food, smoke, handle contact lenses or apply cosmetics in the laboratory.
- Know where the nearest eyewash, safety shower, fire alarm and fire extinguisher are located.
- Close laboratory doors to restrict access while experiments are in progress.
- Secure all gas cylinders.
- Never mouth pipette anything. Use mechanical or manual pipetting devices.
- Wear laboratory coats and other protective clothing while performing laboratory activities. Do not wear this clothing outside of the laboratory. Feet and legs should be covered; sandals and open-toed shoes should not be worn in laboratories. Wear appropriate gloves while handling infectious or toxic materials and animals.
- Wash your hands after handling chemicals, infectious materials, animals, after removing gloves, and before leaving the laboratory.
- Insist upon good housekeeping in your laboratory. Decontaminate all work surfaces daily and handle all spills immediately. Check for insects and rodents. Call the NIA IRP Office of Administration, 410-558-8100, for pest control services.
- Use a biological safety cabinet (BSC) for handling any biologically hazardous materials, whether known to be infectious or not. Put biological safety cabinets in low-traffic areas; minimize activities that disrupt airflow in or around the cabinet. Do not use the BSC for work with toxic, hazardous or volatile material.
- Minimize or contain all aerosol-producing activities, large-volume work, concentrated solutions or cultures. These activities include centrifugation (use safety cups), vortex mixing (stopper tube), blending (use metal safety blender), sonication, grinding, opening containers of infectious material, inoculating culture flasks, inoculating animals, harvesting infectious materials from cultures or animals, weighing or reconstituting toxic powders, etc.
- Fume hoods should be used for laboratory activities that could result in chemical explosions or fires, and for experiments involving toxic, hazardous, or carcinogenic compounds. Use a fume hood for handling volatile organic compounds (phenol, toluene, benzene, etc.) and strong acids and bases. Biological safety cabinets should not be used for this kind of work. Fume hoods are work stations, not storage cabinets. Vented storage areas may be located under the fume work area, but these are not for flammables.
- Respect chemicals and radionucleides. Know their hazards and follow appropriate safety precautions. Chemical and radioactive waste must not be poured down the drain. Call for appropriate waste pickup. Chemical Waste Services (CWS): 1-301-496-4710, radioactive waste: 410-558-8123.
- Use of biologically contaminated material, human blood, body fluids, and cell lines:
Whenever such material is taken out of the lab, be certain it is in a closed, leak-proof container.
To inactivate, the items may be autoclaved, chemically decontaminated, or placed in a medical pathological waste (MPW) box for incineration.
If the material is from a laboratory designated as a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL) or BSL2 with BSL3 practices, it must be properly autoclaved AND then placed in an MPW box for incineration.
Do not overfill an MPW box. When it is 3/4 full, seal the inner bag, close the flaps and seal the box with tape.
Label the MPW box with the room number where the waste was produced.
Take the MPW boxes to the first floor loading dock and place them in the storage shed to be picked up for incineration.
- Be careful with razors, needles and syringes. Use them only when alternative methods are not feasible. Only needle-locking or single-unit syringes should be used. Syringes with needles (uncapped and unclipped) should be placed in red, plastic, bio-hazard sharps container and disposed of as "Medical Pathological Waste."
- All equipment must be documented to be free of chemical, biological and radiological contamination before repair work is done or before sending equipment to surplus. Forms are available from the Property Manager in the NIA IRP Administrative Office.
- Put liquid traps and in-line HEPA filters on all vacuum lines.
- Broken glassware and disposable pipettes (after decontamination) should be placed in a "Broken Glass Disposal Box" and discarded as "General Waste."
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