On nitrile gloves and door handles.

[baratron]

Philip & I leaving the postgraduate lab on Friday to "borrow" ice from the undergrad lab:

"Don't wear your gloves outside the lab."
"Oh!" *takes them off* "Er... why not?"
"Well, partly because you don't want to get whatever's on your gloves on door handles that people are going to touch with bare hands."
"Ah. That makes sense."
"Also because it freaks people out."
"Oh." *sadly* "I always thought that freaking people out was the fun part of being a scientist."

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Comments

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

You should get yourself a clean pair for outside the lab.
I say "clean". I of course mean covered in an interesting selection of "safely" produced stains.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Err. You've seen this story from my place, haven't you?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Sounds nasty! I notice a startling lack of detail, which is consistent with the university's fear of legal action until they figure out what the hell happened.

The worst story I've ever heard is a girl who managed to kill herself by getting set on fire with t-butyl lithium (http://cenblog.org/the-safety-zone/2011/12/uc-patrick-harran-face-criminal-charges-in-death-of-sheri-sangji/). She was clearly at fault, considering that she was handling a chemical known to blow up if you look at it the wrong way (http://www.yale.edu/ehs/reactives.htm) without wearing a lab coat. But how much was she to blame, and how much was lack of training, lack of supervision, or other institutional fail? The legal case has been rumbling on for a couple of years (http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/01/the_sangjiuclaharran_case_now_officially_a_mess.php) now.

The scariest things I am using are pyridine (http://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/19990.htm) (not very scary - wear gloves & use in the fume cupboard) and boron trifluoride (absolutely hideous: toxic, corrosive, flammable, you name it - so I'm using the type dissolved in diethyl ether (http://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/18827.htm)). Yay.