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Asked by to Amy, Anita, Daryl, Nimesh, Sandra on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Anita Thomas answered on 26 Jun 2014:
The nastiest experience I’ve had as a scientist was when I was part of a team trapping marsupial mice in a rainforest (an ecology experiment). We were trapping in the area near a stream – and it was very very very very wet (did I mention that it was a bit damp?). When we returned to the others, they more-or-less screamed at us to go away and strip. So we did. I had 70 leaches on me. David had one up his nose, and Elaine even had one through the ear-ring hole in her ear (no ear-ring in it). But that wasn’t dangerous.
No, the most dangerous experience I’ve had was one that I didn’t even know about at the time. I was one of several people happily working in a Molecular Biology Lab (where we do experiments to look at genes and so-on). After a couple of days, the manager of the lab did a routine check of the radiation levels in the lab (this was the bad old days of using P-32 to label our samples). There were drops of P-32 everywhere! Somebody (a student, who should have known better) had dripped a gel from bench to bench to bench, leaving a trail of radiation all over the place. As you can appreciate, none of us were very happy with the student!
Ooops! Almost forgot. When I was working in a Pharmacology/Toxicology department (ie working with how drugs work and how much drug is bad for you) I was asked to clean up a ‘forgotten’ room. I found a sealed tin in the back of one cupboard. I tried to find out what it was, but it was very rusty, and I could just make out a little bit of a code number in one corner. I googled it, so I could get some idea of what it might be. It turned out to be some sort of nerve gas, left over (some how) from the Vietnam war!
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Amy Monaghan answered on 26 Jun 2014:
Hey Keirahuges, some great questions coming from you!
The most dangerous thing that has happened to me was when I was in a lab and the autoclave exploded. We use an autoclave to sterilise (clean) all our equipment that has been exposed to bacteria. It does this by heating to a really high temperature and pressure. The important thing to remember is to loosen the lids on all the bottles before you put them in! One day somebody forgot, the pressure got to high and BOOM! The lid hit the ceiling and glass smashed everywhere inside. Luckily no one was hurt but everyone got a stern talking to afterwards!!
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Daryl Jones answered on 26 Jun 2014:
Hi kierahughes
Cool question! Well, I think the most dangerous thing to happen was when we had a very infectious brain to look at. We didn’t know it was infectious until we got it. It turned out that it had mad cow disease- which is really infectious to humans. Once we realised what disease it had, we had to evacuate the room and put on special clothing and masks!!!
Another time when I was visiting a different lab, they had an explosion upstairs!! We heard it and felt it but thankfully nobody got hurt. There was fires coming out of the window! Scary!
But these sorts of things don’t happen often 🙂
Hope you have a good day!
Comments
kierahughes commented on :
Thank you for all your replies, glad no one got hurt in each of your stories 🙂