Working in Biomedical/research laboratory?

ZoeFer · March 2016

Hello all, I work in a research lab in a medical school. I have talked to my Principal Investigator the day that I had the first ultrasound. She had her pregnancy while she was in the lab so I thought she could help me about safety issues but she was like `Maybe you should talk to safety office and learn what precautions we should take`. However, I have not talked to safety office yet. As far as I know, I do not deal with anything that would harm the baby at the moment. For example, my friend was working in the clean room and she was not allowed to get in there. I was wondering if anyone here is working in a lab and what precautions you have to take ?

roundthree24 · March 2016

I used to work in a biochemistry lab...what kinds of materials are you working with? Have you looked up all the MSDS's? As long as you aren't working with anything radioactive, just make sure you're using the appropriate PPE and be sure your working area is well ventilated. What kind of equipment do you use? We had quite a few pregnancies in other labs and everybody seemed to be fine. I'm now in dental school and I do work with some pretty bad stuff in our lab classes (like mercury vapor is everywhere and its poorly ventilated) so I got a respirator with cartridges that are rated for mercury vapor. I double glove now too, just to be safe.

tgortney · March 2016

***lurking from May 2016***

I work in an environmental lab. I check all MSDS and constantly wear the proper PPE. I try to stay away from Mercury exposure and chemicals like it, if necessary, I'll work with them in a ventilated area and for a short time. But overall, stay away from ones that say "may harm unborn fetus".

When I found out I was pregnant, I asked my boss for the exposure limits sheets for the analyses that I do on a daily basis. My work does exposure studies every 3 years from an outside contractor and the results are stored away and can be retained anytime needed. Of course, all the exposure results were below detection limit for OSHA so it made me feel better.

Although, I'm not sure how medical school labs operate safety procedures.

I'd imagine that your lab already has proper safety procedures put in place to prevent a lot of exposure anyway (for those who are not pregnant), if not, this is a good time to look into them.

Good luck!

stay safe!

MrsDho11 · March 2016

If your PI told you to talk to the safety office, talk to the safety office! I've worked in a medical research lab in the past, and there were definitely chemicals, etc. that pregnant women would not even touch.

virginiaham · March 2016

MrsDho11 said:

If your PI told you to talk to the safety office, talk to the safety office! I've worked in a medical research lab in the past, and there were definitely chemicals, etc. that pregnant women would not even touch.

THIS. Go talk to them! I say this gently, but of all of the advice you could brush off, this seems like the worst kind to brush off. I'd verify with Safety that you aren't actually working with anything dangerous rather than assuming. I would imagine it would be a short conversation/meeting as it is. Mildly inconvenient, but I'm gonna go with non-negotiable.

ZoeFer · March 2016

Thanks everyone for the comments. I basically know about the chemicals I use and how to handle them, i am very careful about that and use the fume hood mostly. There isnt anything that is directly harmful for pregnancy. However I conduct experiments in different labs and so many people share benches, i am mosty worried if someone else use something out of the hood etc. I guess I have to trust that people take necessary precautions when they do experiments. I do not feel comfortable to walk around in the labs and tell everyone that i am pregnant yet. I will talk to safety office this week and see their policy as well.
Thanks again and i wish happy and healthy pregnancies to everyone.

MrsDepo · March 2016

This is really helpful for me since I'm in a biomedical lab as well. The radioactivity I deal with is only tritium so I don't have to worry about that. I feel pretty comfortable with the chemicals I work with and I can be pretty good about PPE. I'm the only one that can do my job so if I can't do it I'll have to be replaced, and I can't let that happen. I think I can get my boss to do anything dealing with paraformaldehyde and I think that's the worst thing we deal with weekly. We recently replaced all our ethidium bromide and xylene with safer alternatives so no issue there!

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