If you have ever visited an academic or industry lab, you will be taught about the protocols for that lab. Even in high school, there are strict rules to follow and ways to behave and dress around lab materials. What you are required to wear is called Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and it is designed to protect the wearer from injury or infection.
A clean room inside the Centre for Cell and Vector Production, at CCRM in Toronto
At CCRM, we have two labs. Staff and visitors wear different PPE depending on which facility they are entering. The most extreme garb is for Good Manufacturing Practices facilities. Pro tip: save the coffee/tea for when your work day is done because bathroom breaks are a lot of effort. (See photo right.)
We also have nearly 500 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all sorts of things, such as lab methods, personal health and hygiene, operations, safety, biosafety, quality assurance, quality control, equipment, and more. We even have one for pest and rodent control that’s itching to be ratified. (Sorry if that wasn’t funny; I just made it up on the fly.)
In case reading SOPs sounds dull (yawn), it is. If only we could watch a funny lab parody video to learn about PPE and SOPs. Oh, we can. Thanks AsapSCIENCE!
Stacey Johnson
Latest posts by Stacey Johnson (see all)
- Right Turn: #pinksocks, diabetes news and other ramblings - June 24, 2025
- Right Turn: Some takeaways from Advanced Therapies Week 2025 - January 31, 2025
- Right Turn: The top 10 most-read blog posts in 2024 - January 2, 2025
Comments