Safety in the Lab

Safety in INSA Toulouse

INSA Toulouse is a public engineer school in which several government research laboratories are present. Workers at INSA must follow the French rules concerning safety and environmental regulations. Most of these rules are presented in the manual “Manuel de sécurité en laboratoires” (from the WHO), which allowed us to understand and apply safety rules when manipulating microorganisms and chemicals. In addition, daily use of the Deming wheel allowed us to improve the safety rules and keep them updated.

Concerning the laboratory

Personal protective equipment

We used conventional protection all along our daily manipulating. All experiments were perfomed with gloves and a conventional lab coat, protecting the worker and avoiding contaminations. We also wear glasses when needed (UV exposition, hot water manipulations, chemicals manipulation, etc.).

Biological and Chemical Waste

After a 1h30 training for chemical waste gesture and biological hazard, we learned how to use different trash containers as described in the picture. Biological waste, potentially containing viable microorganism, were autoclaved in a special bag, then discarded. Chemical wastes are grouped by categories and eliminated via the regular procedure for all chemicals of the INSA.

Devices and Material

Here is a list of devices we used and how to use them safely:

Concerning our E. calculus project

Would E. calculus raise safety issues in terms of:

Do any of the new BioBrick parts (or devices) that you made this year raise any safety issues?

The only safety issue we can associate with our new Biobricks is researcher exposure to a microorganism when testing the parts. During the iGEM summer work, all safety measures were respected to avoid any problem.

Is there a local biosafety group, committee, or review board at your institution?

There is one biosafety group, leaded by a specialist in safety regulations in our institute. This person is in charge of the evaluation and implementation of the safety measures in the Instititute. Moreover, as INSA Toulouse is a five years engineer school, there are plenty of review boards that we can consult at any time to answer arising questions about biosafety. In addition, biosafety issues are regularly evaluated by the security laboratory officer.

Do you have any other ideas how to deal with safety issues that could be useful for future iGEM competitions? How could parts, devices and systems be made even safer through biosafety engineering?

Safety issues are usually highly specific for each project. Associating DNA parts together will always pose safety risks in case of accidental release of DNA or bacteria occur. European safety rules are pretty strict and are tailored to avoid accidental contamination of the environment or the humans manipulating these microorganisms. We think that the fact that Safety Issues are mandatory for iGEM projects is a very good way to force students (and their advisors!) to take some time evaluating (or getting help to evaluate) their specific safety (biosafety) issues.
When we discussed biosafety issues of our project, we analyzed the 2012 Paris-Bettencourt iGEM project named "Bware", which proposes several measures to ensure that new synthetic constructions do not consitute health or environmental issues if the strain was released on the wild. Such a system would be ideal to destroy any genetic material that could be released during or after the use of E. calculus.