Dear Users, This message is relevant to ALL users. This morning when emptying the regular trash in the confocal rooms (meant for lens tissue, paper, normal tissue, etc), I made the discovery of gloves, a full set of slides, with mounting medium leaking everywhere (see attached pictures), and to top it off a series of glass coverslips in the CF4 trash bin. As all the microscopy room are equipped with specific sharps bins and specific biological waste bins, I must assume that the person who trashed those items was too lazy to take the 3-4 steps to the appropriate bins or did not care. This behaviour is not tolerable and consists a serious health & safety issue: - I could have cut myself, not knowing there were slides in the regular trash; I would had to report it to H&S, have it examined, make sure there was nothing toxic in it (DAPI in mounting medium is a DNA-intercalating dye), fill out mountains of paper-work preventing me to attend to the daily work of the facility. - the cleaner who empties the bin could have cut him/herself, and this could have led to a legal issue for the college in addition to some distress for the person (it has happened in the past). This can not happen again. So here a reminder of H&S rules: - All FILM rooms are biological safety level 1 rooms, the same as your labs. It implies no eating or drinking in there, and separation of biological and non-biological waste, which should be standard lab practice. If you are unsure about good lab practice, ask your lab manager. - For lens paper, tissue, paper, etc use the regular trash bin (brown ones) - For gloves, tissue that was in contact with biological or chemical material, left over mounting medium, multi-well plates, plastic Pasteur pipettes use the orange biological bin (no liquid in it please). If your multi-well plates still have media in it, take it back to your lab to dispose of the liquid appropriately - liquid is not meant for the orange plastic bags. - For pipette tips, slides, ibidi dishes, glass coverslips use the yellow/orange sharps plastic container. It is made of "solid" plastic that won't be perforated by sharps, unlike the orange plastic bags. - If you don't know where the bins are or are unsure where you have to trash your item, or you find something is missing, come and ask us! I hope I won't have to write this message again and that the person responsible for the mess on the CF4 bin will take better care and come forward so we can go over the Health & Safety regulations of the Facility with him/her. Best wishes, Debora Debora Keller, PhD FILM - Facility for Imaging by Light Microscopy - Facility Manager - Super-Resolution Specialist - Sir Alexander Fleming Building, desk 408 Imperial College London / South Kensington Exhibition Road London SW7 2AZ, UK Phone: +44 (0)207 594 2023 Mobile: + 44(0) 7760 256 889 E-mail: d.keller@imperial.ac.uk<mailto:d.keller@imperial.ac.uk> Website: http://imperial.ac.uk/imagingfacility