Keep your pee away from the Food!!!

[Mouse_Maven]

@featherlou

No, urine isn’t particularly dangerous, but as others have mentioned, labs don’t routinely mix samples and food. That’s one of my biggest peeves, watching any kind of medical drama that has people cooking coffee over a bunsen burner or something - that kind of thing is just not done in medical labs (research labs could be different - I couldn’t say). You don’t even chew the end of your pen in a medical lab - the whole lab and everything in it is considered contaminated at all times. Not to mention the “ick” factor - I know pee is not particularly biohazardous, but I still don’t want a bottle of it next to my sandwich.

Research labs can be a little different, it depends on how militant the staff are about enforcing the rules. Our labs are set up so there is bench space and separate desks. In general, I’m ok with food and drink being on someone’s desk, but I will not tolerate anything edible on a lab bench.

I have worked in labs with very relaxed attitudes to the rules: using the hot plates to make tea, drinking the tea out of a beaker, food kept with biological samples (we’re talking E. coli modified to resist an antibotic here)

Personally, the pee didn’t bother me. It was in a sealed container, and my food is in a zipped lunch box. We were due for an inspection, so I was very angry to see something like this in a place where the inspectors will be looking.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Mouse_Maven

<snip>I have worked in labs with very relaxed attitudes to the rules: using the hot plates to make tea, drinking the tea out of a beaker, food kept with biological samples (we’re talking E. coli modified to resist an antibotic here)
<snip>

Wow - those labs are asking for trouble. The only way I can see having samples in with food is if the samples were sterilized on the outside before being put in the fridge, and even then, my med lab tech background says, “No way, mister! That’s just wrong!” People food just doesn’t mix with biological samples or chemicals and reagents. That’s a dangerous path to go down.

[Loopydude]

I think the general idea is that the Feds don’t want you making judgement calls about what is or is not a biohazard. Sure, any reasonably intelligent person can figure out a urine sample from a healthy person or animal in the fridge isn’t really a big deal, but there are lots of things you find in the lab that need to be kept cool, and may or may not be harmful if spilled and/or accidentally inhaled or ingested. I can’t, for instance, store an unopened sterile bottle of Ringer’s solution in the food fridge. Why not? I mean, it’s sterile saline. You could put yourself on an IV drip filled with it and be fine. Well, the Feds say it’s a lab material, it belongs in the lab, and only the lab, and NO lab materials are to be mingling about with stuff people are going to eat. Period. There’s such a huge variety of solutions people work with on a daily basis, and so many chemicals that may or may not be hazardous that go into them, that it’s too much to expect of the average human that they keep it all straight and make perfect judgements about how to handle it.

So, in the lab setting, ALL of it is treated as potentially harmful to some degree. You flaunt those standards, you incur the wrath of at least one and perhaps many Federal regulatory agencies, any of which would dearly love to nail your ass. And they’re all about guilt by association. If you have a problem with safety, your entire institution has a problem with safety, and they’re also quite happy to penalize your employer for allowing idiots like you to be handling Dangerous Stuff.

[Mouse_Maven]

@Loopydude

I think the general idea is that the Feds don’t want you making judgement calls about what is or is not a biohazard. Sure, any reasonably intelligent person can figure out a urine sample from a healthy person or animal in the fridge isn’t really a big deal, but there are lots of things you find in the lab that need to be kept cool, and may or may not be harmful if spilled and/or accidentally inhaled or ingested. I can’t, for instance, store an unopened sterile bottle of Ringer’s solution in the food fridge. Why not? I mean, it’s sterile saline. You could put yourself on an IV drip filled with it and be fine. Well, the Feds say it’s a lab material, it belongs in the lab, and only the lab, and NO lab materials are to be mingling about with stuff people are going to eat. Period. There’s such a huge variety of solutions people work with on a daily basis, and so many chemicals that may or may not be hazardous that go into them, that it’s too much to expect of the average human that they keep it all straight and make perfect judgements about how to handle it.

So, in the lab setting, ALL of it is treated as potentially harmful to some degree. You flaunt those standards, you incur the wrath of at least one and perhaps many Federal regulatory agencies, any of which would dearly love to nail your ass. And they’re all about guilt by association. If you have a problem with safety, your entire institution has a problem with safety, and they’re also quite happy to penalize your employer for allowing idiots like you to be handling Dangerous Stuff.

Whenever I think a rule or standard is stupid, I remember the “idiot factor.” I have been around labs long enough to see some studpid stuff. In the Pithy Quotes thread someone had one that said “A phd is not an immunization against stupidity” (or something like that).

[brendon_small]

@Mouse_Maven

I work in a research laboratory. Most of the research done here is on Type One Diabetes. We have strict rules about where you can have food and drink. There is an established “food fridge” and lunch area outside the lab space.

Yesterday morning, I opened the food fridge to put my lunch away. There were the usual plastic containers of unknown age and origin, other lunches, and a bottle o’ piss.

This is the third fucking time there has been a urine sample in the food fridge!!

There are plenty of sample fridges down the hall! I’m gonna find the lazy idiot that has left this golden cup with the edibles and make him/her drink it.

Gahhhh!

I have awaited this thread since the mention of the urine…thank goodness it is here, I must have skipped over it (it’s been a busy week) but I am glad! heh

Brendon

[XJETGIRLX]

@wring

I think you may have achieved what I thought was impossible - a Pit thread to which no Doper will disagree w/the OP’s point.

Oh, I don’t know about that. I would have thought no one would argue seriously against washing your hands after you take a piss, but apparently some people don’t see the big deal about pee.

[DanBlather]

@Don't Call Me Shirley

Meh-

We’ve got a freezer full of pee in my office. I’ve been known to put a frozen dinner in there on occasion when the food freezer is full. Doesn’t bother me. The dinner is sealed in its tray, which is sealed in the box, and the pee is sealed in a cup, which is sealed in a bag. That’s four seals between the pee and my food (and pee isn’t dangerous to begin with.)

Even though it doesn’t bother me though, I can understand how it might bother some. Diff’rent strokes.

Diff’rent sample.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@XJETGIRLX

Oh, I don’t know about that. I would have thought no one would argue seriously against washing your hands after you take a piss, but apparently some people don’t see the big deal about pee.

People are stupid. You may have noticed this.

And what Loopydude said. I think that’s what I was trying to say. Don’t mean to attack you, Mouse_Maven - I think we’re on the same side of this discussion. People get complacent in dangerous workplaces like labs, and people get sick or hurt.

[Mouse_Maven]

@featherlou

People are stupid. You may have noticed this.

And what Loopydude said. I think that’s what I was trying to say. Don’t mean to attack you, Mouse_Maven - I think we’re on the same side of this discussion. People get complacent in dangerous workplaces like labs, and people get sick or hurt.

No offense taken. Just because I know better doesn’t mean everyone else does. One thing the Stepford Students hate hearing me say is,“I don’t want any injuries or accidents on my watch. You’re not as smart as you think you are!”

[mnemosyne]

Not quite the same thing, but I just started a job in a pharmaceutical lab, and, frankly, their safety standards with respect to handing chemicals is appaling. I’m actually quite worried about it - I will be mentioning it to my supervisor, but I want to get a bit more familiar with the lab before hand, so I can go in with workable solutions to the problems. What shocks me, is they just passed an FDA inspection and they didn’t get cited on any of this stuff that I noticed in the first week of work!

People handle organic solvents (ethanol, methanol, acetonitrile) without any kind of PPE other than mandatory lab coats - they aren’t wearing gloves, the lab doesn’t have the fume hood space to dispense in hoods (this should change, I hope, with new construction) and no one wears any respiratory protection whatsoever.

They weigh active pharmaceutical ingredients and raw materials out on open balances (no powder weighing hoods) again, without gloves, without dust masks. I have seen no evidence whatsoever of any kind of information system providing the chemists with the information they need to know whether these powders are dangerous. I don’t know the OELs of any of the products I’m expected to work with. I don’t know where any MSDSs are.

They pour organics and other pharmaceutical waste right down the drain. They do have a waste disposal system, but they are constantly pouring out first rinses, and I’m pretty sure their drainage system doesn’t go to a private filtering/purification/incineration system, especially since this particular building used to be a strip mall! Powder waste from around balances and such go directly into garbage cans, not sealed in any way. I don’t know if the waste gets incinerated or not, but even so, it’s a HUGE occupational exposure risk!

I like this job, though. I like the people, the products are interesting, and the pay and benefits are good. But their OHS system appears to be non existant. I will work to improve it, but seeing as I’ve only been there a week, it’s a little awkward for me to walk in as a bottom-rung employee and start asking for changes. Like I said, I want to come up with reasonable, workable solutions and present it to my supervisor and manager as a complete proposal rather than just complaining about it. In the meantime, I will protect myself the best I can, and be as strict about cleaning and minimizing exposure as possible.

Oh, and the way they calculate something that comes up incredibly frequently is mathematically flawed… I’d suggest that a huge part of their data generated over the past god-knows-how-long is (admittedly only slightly) incorrect as a result. I don’t know how it’s possible that not a single inspector or auditor has ever spoken about any of this!

[Loopydude]

How is that even possible? To pick one item, do they not have sink disposal units with monitoring equipment? For instance, if we dump straight organics, acids, bases, aldehydes, you name it, in surprisingly modest volumes, down the sink, the units downstairs that pre-treat the waste water get fouled, alarms go off, and we catch holy Hell. First we get nasty emails, and then the occupational safety/chemical hygene officers come over and start questioning everybody to try to get to the bottom of the source of the spill. This has happened I think only twice in the six or seven years I’ve been here, and it’s harrowing enough that that was too many. Also, we’ve had the FDA and IACUC gestapo do their occasional sweeps, and that’s even more harrowing. Everything is checked doubly to make sure it’s clean, secure, properly labeled, catalogued, the works, and we still sweat bullets. Your employer know somebody or something? Has our employer put The Fear into us a bit excessively?

[Ms_Macphisto]

@Mouse_Maven

Whenever I think a rule or standard is stupid, I remember the “idiot factor.” I have been around labs long enough to see some studpid stuff. In the Pithy Quotes thread someone had one that said “A phd is not an immunization against stupidity” (or something like that).

That sounds about right. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with one of the PhD candidates in my lab (referred to as D) when I was working on my MSc.

Me: Hello?
D: Hey Ms Macphisto, is anyone else there yet?
Me: Yeah, it’s almost 11. (He tended to start work around noon and stay until late at night)
D: Oh. Listen, can you do me a favour?
Me: That depends, what’s the favour?
D: Can you try to get my milk out of the fridge without S (the lab manager and wife of the PI) noticing? It’s in a Coke bottle next to the tritium. You can just throw it in the garbage.
Me: :smack:

The scary part is the PhD was going to be his second advanced degree - he already was an MD.

[Cat_Whisperer]

mnemosyne, that is so very, very bad. My husband, a safety officer, read your post too, and his comments were:

• WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System) is nation-wide; all workers are required to have WHMIS training if they work with controlled product (which you are).
• All companies must have a current MSDS for every controlled product used and all workers must be trained on them.

So your company is breaking federal law right there on these two points alone. In Alberta, workers are required to refuse work that they believe is unsafe*; we don’t know what the law is in Quebec, but I think you should make it your business to look it up. He suggests that you make an anonymous call to Occupational Health and Safety in Quebec. As for dumping the toxic chemicals down the sink (and may I say :eek: to that?), I would suggest a call to your local city council to rat these guys out for that, too. You can’t just dump things down a sink; that is not only illegal, but dangerous, too.

In other words, I’m sorry to hear that it’s a good job, otherwise, but it is dangerous and unsafe for you as a worker and dangerous and unsafe for your local environment. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for talking to your bosses, either - they’re the ones who have set it up this way, and either they don’t know how dangerous it is, or they don’t care. I don’t think I would talk to your bosses before blowing the whistle; then they’d know who blew it, and I don’t know what kind of protection whistle-blowers have in Quebec, either.

*“Existence of Imminent Danger” Sect. 35 of Alberta OH & S Act.