Laboratory Safety and Techniques

Laboratory Safety

1. Wear eye protection at all times.
   

2. Never have food in a chemical laboratory.
   

3. Never work alone.
   

4. Never pipet by mouth, or inhale gases or vapors. Use a hood.
   

5. Use proper care in dispenceing and mixing chemicals.
   

6. Use proper care when heating chemicals, or digesting samples.
   

7. Know the location of emergency equipment and a telephone.
   

Simple Rules of Laboratory Technique

1. Obtain a laboratory notebook.
   

2. Use a laboratory notebook and place all information relevant to analyses in it.
   

3. Be neat in the laboratory both in handling of solutions and with glassware and instruments.
   

4. Treat analytical balances and other instrumentation with care.
   

5. When weighing samples do not get finger prints or other foreign matter on the weighing containers.
   

   Use a folded filter paper in a loop to pick up the weighing container.
   This is important when pushing the accuracy of a balance.Try weighing a fingerprint.
   

6. It is necessary to calibrate instruments.
   

   Depending on the nature of the experiment this calibration may need to be done before every sequence of measurements.
   

7. Understand of the idea of a ``blank" and an unknown.
   

   A blank is run in the same manner as an unknown and represents a ``control" to determine the instrument ``zero", or background, and the presence of contaminants.
   

8. Clean up any spills with care.
   

9. Properly dispose of hazardous chemicals.
   

10. Do not take more reagents than needed.
    

    Amounts indicated in written instructions are adequate.
    

11. Rinse and dry spatulas after each addition of test material.
    

    Do not place spatulas on bench top, but in a clean beaker.
    

12. Do not contaminate stock reagents.
    

    Use a separate, clean spatula for each solid reagent.
    

    When finished with spatula, replace in clean beaker or flask and not on bench top.
    

13. Disposable pipettes are to be used for liquid reagents.
    

    The reason is to reduce cross contamination of solutions.
    

    Pipette dispensers should be used-{\bf not ones mouth!

14. Use liquid dispensers when available.
    

15. Deionized water is usually available at a wall faucet.
    

    To avoid crowding and contamination take a suitable container of deionized water back to the lab bench for use.
    

16. To clean glassware remove labels, use a brush with soap and tap water, rinse with tap water and finally rinse several times with small aliqouts of distilled water.
    

17. Find the location of reagents and disposal containers.
    

    Discard organic - containing solutions in waste containers provided.
    

    Discard metal ions such as Cu^{++}, etc in appropriate waste containers.
    

    Discard concentrated acids and bases in appropriate waste containers.
    

    Discard small quantities of certain common, dilute acids and bases down sink with plenty of running water.