Staying Safe in the Lab:

• All team members received training from the lab’s safety officer. This included additional training on how to operate the autoclave and the bio-safety cabinet.
• The safety induction covered the following: Lab access and rules, responsible individuals as contact points, the difference between biosafety levels, introducting biosafety equipment, good microbial technique, disinfection and sterilization procedures, emergency Procedures, transport rules, bio-security, dual use and experiments of concern, chemicals, fire and electrical safety.
• All team members completed online courses and quizzes on fire safety, basic laboratory safety, autoclave safety, biocabinet safety, chemical lab safety and biological lab safety.
• All team members were allocated appropriate PPE for the duration of the project.
• All team members were familiarized with emergency lab protocols.
• COSHH forms were completed.
• Appropriate waste disposal protocols were adhered to through out the project.
• Aseptic technique and the use of the flow hood were used through out the project; the aseptic technique of team members was practiced with the supervision of our advisors prior to starting the project to ensure it was of high standard.

Planning a Safe Experiment

The execution of a safe experiment requires consideration of safety measures before the project commences, AND it requires the safety of the experiment to be considered fully at subsequent stages of the experiment. Projects often go in different directions and different questions may want to be addressed as a project progresses; therefore it is paramount that safety considerations remain up to date with the trajectory of the project. We ensured this was the case by carrying out the following steps and reviewing our safety measures through out the project.

• Choice of a safe chassis for our experiment.
• Project specific COSHH forms for all chemicals used. Where possible, we chose to work with the chemicals that pose less of a risk.
• Project specific waste disposal forms.

Chemical disposal

Throughout the summer, the team worked in BioMakeSpace. At the end of September it closed down and relocated to MakeSpace. As part of this process the iGEM team worked to dispose of old chemical waste. This included identification of approximately 100 chemicals and characterisation of their weight and their container type as well as identification of the hazards associated with the chemicals using safety data sheets (SDS) online. The chemicals were carefully labelled and organised into separate hazard classes to be disposed of responsibly. Throughout the classification and organisation an appreciation of the underlying chemistry and reactivities of the chemicals needed to be considered.

Safety form

For additional detailed information on our saftey procedures and considerations, check out our safety form