A quick whinge, which is, after all, what blogs were invented for. I have just been to a refresher safety course. The reason for this course is that someone was insanely stupid, and as a result someone else was injured. I'm not sure what you can do about the idiots out there, particularly the anonymous ones, but I've got some ideas.
Anyway, we all got to go and learn again the stuff we already know and also find out what idiotic new legislation has been passed to make my life more difficult. And there's always some new stuff that leaves me going "huh"?!
This time it was that pippette tips of less than 200ul are to be treated as sharps. This is because, apparently, in some magical far off places there are cleaners who actually take PC2 waste out, and who clasp the waste bags tightly to their chests - so tightly in fact that the tips break through the bags and push into their skin. They don't break the skin - but that, dear friends, is irrelevant. Because after all, the possibility is there. They could break the skin, and theoretically they could be infectious with some deadly disease and then the cleaner could end up maimed or hideously scarred for life or even, god forbid, dead. And then who would take out the PC2 waste?
The likelihood of this happening is, I think, pretty remote. But just in case, instead of suggesting that maybe you should not hold the bags so tightly they break, or just getting what every other institute does and get the PhD students to take the waste out we're treating small pippette tips as sharps. On the up side, this will reduce the amount of bagged waste. On the down side, I think the number of sharps bins we go through is going to increase dramatically. I mean, you know, PCR lab and all. Most of my work involves using 10ul and 100ul tips. Hm. Maybe I should order a whole stack of them now.
Now what I want to know is why large pippette tips (ie 200 and 1000ul tips) are so much less dangerous. After all, they can also pierce bags, and could theoretically stab someone in a non-skin piercing way. So why continue to pretend that these are only PC2, rather than potentially deadly weapons we can use to wipe out all remaining cleaners (and/or PhD students).
And I want to know where to get one of those cleaners.
Anyway, we all got to go and learn again the stuff we already know and also find out what idiotic new legislation has been passed to make my life more difficult. And there's always some new stuff that leaves me going "huh"?!
This time it was that pippette tips of less than 200ul are to be treated as sharps. This is because, apparently, in some magical far off places there are cleaners who actually take PC2 waste out, and who clasp the waste bags tightly to their chests - so tightly in fact that the tips break through the bags and push into their skin. They don't break the skin - but that, dear friends, is irrelevant. Because after all, the possibility is there. They could break the skin, and theoretically they could be infectious with some deadly disease and then the cleaner could end up maimed or hideously scarred for life or even, god forbid, dead. And then who would take out the PC2 waste?
The likelihood of this happening is, I think, pretty remote. But just in case, instead of suggesting that maybe you should not hold the bags so tightly they break, or just getting what every other institute does and get the PhD students to take the waste out we're treating small pippette tips as sharps. On the up side, this will reduce the amount of bagged waste. On the down side, I think the number of sharps bins we go through is going to increase dramatically. I mean, you know, PCR lab and all. Most of my work involves using 10ul and 100ul tips. Hm. Maybe I should order a whole stack of them now.
Now what I want to know is why large pippette tips (ie 200 and 1000ul tips) are so much less dangerous. After all, they can also pierce bags, and could theoretically stab someone in a non-skin piercing way. So why continue to pretend that these are only PC2, rather than potentially deadly weapons we can use to wipe out all remaining cleaners (and/or PhD students).
And I want to know where to get one of those cleaners.
posted by Alison at 11:00 PM
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