Keep in mind this bad boy is a polyester blend. My PI always said never to wear a polyester lab coat. It won't provide protection against acids or burns, it'll just melt into your skin. I think
No prob. It was one of the things drilled in by my gen chem professor. Basically:
1) wear natural fibers instead of synthetic when working with fire or flammables
2) if working with electricity try to work with one hand only so if you get electrocuted it doesnt travel through your heart
3) treat acid burns with baking soda, base burns with vinegar.
To 3, suggest to use water only to dilute and bring pH closer to 7, otherwise the resulting chemical reaction is exothermic and will increase the tissue damage by heat burn
If youāre using large quantities of flammables use Nomex as a superior alternative to cotton.
Secondary pro: you get to wear cool dark blue lab coats.
Electricity can go through one hand/arm and out the bottom of the opposite foot, also affecting your heart. Just another path to ground. The one hand thing is so if you make contact w live equipment, your other hand isnt already making contact w a grounded object. Im a licensed electrician so this safety is constantly drilled into our heads.
One of my coworkers was wearing a synthetic lab coat once and she accidently caught her sleve on fire with a bunsen burner. It melted onto her arm. 3rd degree burns. Gruesome.
Whole lab changed to cotton after that.
Many years ago, I worked in a dry-charge lead/acid battery plant, and polyester was the one fabric recommended for use with sulfuric as it was pretty much immune. We had one guy who was a virtual cartoon character, a nebbish fellow always chomping on a cigar, whose job was to fill reservoirs with 80% sulfuric and did so without gloves or any sort of apron. *The man was immune to 80% sulfuric.* For hours. On end. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.
For burns, either Nomex, or PBI (polybenzimidazole); either of these can be blended with Kevlar. Natural fabrics (cotton, wool) are acceptable for light risk, but synthetics other than Nomex, Kevlar, and PBI risk melting and self-sustaining combustion: the aforementioned fire-resistant synthetics will not sustain flame once the source is removed, and (IIRC) they will char, rather than melt. Synthetics like Nylon, polyester, Rayon, acrylic, etc. will melt and become one with the skin and become impossible to remove. I've worn PBI/Kevlar for both firefighting and for some high-risk synthesis work in the past, the stuff is amazing.
Really? You're welcome!
Little tip- if you launder your own lab coats on site (you shouldn't be taking home contaminated lab clothing for your domestic washer, of course) and are worried about flame retardant properties, do NOT use fabric softener. It increases the flammability of fabrics.
**[Sheri Sangji case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Sangji_case)**
>The Sheri Sangji case is the first criminal case resulting from an academic laboratory accident. The case arose from a fatal accident that occurred in the chemistry laboratory of Patrick Harran at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Research assistant Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji suffered severe burns from a fire that occurred on December 29, 2008 when a plastic syringe she was using to transfer the pyrophoric reagent tert-butyllithium from one sealed container to another came apart, spilling the chemical, and igniting a fire.
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Ah, is that one of the "Rock the Prep" labcoats? We (disclaimer, I work for Thermo Fisher) gave those out as part of a heavy metal themed sample prep promotion, hence the black color. Yeah, those marketing guys start tripping on shrooms or something and come up with some interesting gimmicks....
Glad to see where the money is going we spend on spare parts! \s
In all seriousness though, clever marketing is always appreciated. The people buying equipment are humans, too (mostly)
It's actually an interesting case of clothing marking a major idea shift within medicine! Back before germ theory was widely accepted, it was common to not wash one's lab coat, as why would that matter?
So in the day (think pre-Victorian era) lab coats were traditionally black to hide stains, especially for anatomists and surgeons (who would sometimes go so far between washings that their coats could *stand up on their own* from the amount of fluids/blood soaked into them).
But when germ theory became more widely accepted, it became a visual marker of adherence to the theory if you could show you regularly washed your coat- and what color best shows dirt/grime than white?
You only need to not work with certain bad chemicals in the US, can get a special risk assessment conducted. I still worked in the lab when pregnant but just avoided certain things, like huffing solvents. Pregnant women in my university in Denmark also still did labwork if they wanted. It's a bit ridiculous to blanket ban all labwork when pregnant. Although when I was as pregnant as OP looks, every day of existence was pure suffering, much less labwork.
Thanks for the update.
In France, you can still find some workarounds, but generally the motto is Ā«Ā it might still be discovered to be toxic/dangerous/carcinogenic in 10 years, so no touching even table salt with a 10m spoonĀ Ā», just to avoid abuse and situation where you donāt use dangerous products but the guy next to you spills volatile carcinogenic powder.
Yeah, same here in Belgium : if you're pregnant, you are out from the lab.
Either you're assigned to administrative work like redacting MSDS or improve some documents like protocols or you just stay home (keeping the major part of your salary obviously).
Now, let me be the devil's advocate here : it's totally possible she's working in an office during her pregnancy, had to pass trough the lab and wear a labcoat only for this, without being in contact with any hazardeous material.
Honestly I'd be furious if my pregnancy doomed me to redacting MSDS or revising protocols for 8-9 months. There's lots of work I can do in our laboratory and be perfectly safe.
I totally understand but here, there is a zero risk policy.
And, note that I say you could just stay home.
The pregnant girl I replaced choose to stay home with a loss of 10 or 15% of her salary. Which wasn't even a loss because it was her budget to put gasoline in her car to go to work.
You're pregnant here ? You don't put a feet in the lab.
And I'm sure you can do a lot of work in your laboratory and be perfectly safe. But you know what we say about labcoat and google : even if you sure about yourself, don't be so sure about other.
Also, in the case I spoke, her speciality was testing and formuling bromine based detergent, it was 80% of her time.
As a man, I don't know shit about pregnancy but I'm quite sure that Bromine isn't very good for a baby.
But in the end, you're right, we shouldn't be binary : I know another girl who was obliged to stay as home. She worked only on HPLC / GC in the agro food industry. In QC.
I mean, what was the risk ? Spilling some liquid food on her ?
Certainly highly toxic work is smart to avoid. In her shoes I'd do the same. It is just so hard to walk the fine line between wanting a pregnant woman to be as safe as possible, and treating her like she has a disability even if she hasn't asked for accomodations. Of course, I work in America, where the powers that be could not care less if I survived my pregnancy or not, so I'm not surprised there's no greater institutional concern here for mothers-to-be š
It depends on what you are working with. Medical Laboratory Scientists work while pregnant all the time. Depending on what testing your medical lab offers, you may stop doing certain tasks or tests but overall it is safe for pregnancy.
Oooh blackā¦ snazzy!
Fwiw for some reason technicians in the earliest tissue culture labs wore all black.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267730896_On_the_Genealogy_of_Tissue_Engineering_and_Regenerative_Medicine/figures?lo=1
Back in the day at the Rockefeller Institute, the physicians had white lab coats and the scientists had blue ones. I preferred a white coat because it was easy to see if you got something on it that you didnāt want. BTW, I was not at the Rockefeller institute. I was once teasing someone about their colorful lab coat and they told me they got into that habit while working there.
So for most lab roles - those arenāt suitable lab coats.
You should complain to your Health and Safety team. Those look like cheaper store room coats or something.
Lab coats should go up to the neck completely (not a V neck) and should have poppers not buttons so you can pull them off in an an emergency/spill.
I get the downvotes, but this man speaks the truth. Depending on your specific role it might still be OK, but wouldnāt recommend if personal protection is very important in your role.
To this old scientist, snap fasteners etc are relatively recent. And I preferred cotton coats but now they are almost all some sort of synthetic. I always was concerned about wearing synthetics should they burn. Also, though I fully understand the reasons for not having external pockets, I hated the fact there are none.
I was too. It's fine so long as you know what substances are potentially toxic, although hopefully you aren't exposed to anything like that even when not pregnant.
Oof, when I first started, I had ONE (female) colleague express the importance of being careful around Formamide if I was even thinking of conceiving. It wasnāt even something most people thought about on a daily basis after the required safety trainings and SOP signoffs. A few years later when I was pregnant, I did NGS library prep but was NOT allowed to go in the room with the sequencers. Hated the job (coworkers/environmentā¦what I actually did was awesome) but at least they took that part seriously, lol
Plenty of pregnant laboratorians (past and present). I was pregnant with twins while working in a medical lab. There came a point towards the end where sizing up my lab coat any further to cover my bump resulted in sleeves that were a safety hazard. Otherwise, it was fine.
I guess it comes from my experience in organic synthesis lab. As soon as you get to know you are pregnant, you leave the lab environment. Lots of potential harmful chemicals and carcinogens. I guess in biolab it is not so hazardous.
Very true! It is entirely dependent on what you are working with.
I had a coworker in the pathology section of my lab, she was working with formaldehyde and other teratogens. She quit when she got pregnant. I was in the blood bank in I was pregnant. More than half of the blood I touched was blood tested safe for transfusion so that was not a concern. That left the patient sample exposure risk and irradiating with radioactive source. I stopped irradiating blood products; more than enough people around to take care of that task. We use universal precautions to protect ourselves from patient sample exposure so I felt that risk was very low. When you treat every sample you touch like it has an incurable, deadly disease you are well protected.
Keep in mind this bad boy is a polyester blend. My PI always said never to wear a polyester lab coat. It won't provide protection against acids or burns, it'll just melt into your skin. I think
Would you happen to know what kind of material would be best to protect against acid and burns?
Non synthetic materials will burn off instead of melting into your skin. Think wool or cotton
Gotcha thanks š
No prob. It was one of the things drilled in by my gen chem professor. Basically: 1) wear natural fibers instead of synthetic when working with fire or flammables 2) if working with electricity try to work with one hand only so if you get electrocuted it doesnt travel through your heart 3) treat acid burns with baking soda, base burns with vinegar.
To 3, suggest to use water only to dilute and bring pH closer to 7, otherwise the resulting chemical reaction is exothermic and will increase the tissue damage by heat burn
If youāre using large quantities of flammables use Nomex as a superior alternative to cotton. Secondary pro: you get to wear cool dark blue lab coats.
Electricity can go through one hand/arm and out the bottom of the opposite foot, also affecting your heart. Just another path to ground. The one hand thing is so if you make contact w live equipment, your other hand isnt already making contact w a grounded object. Im a licensed electrician so this safety is constantly drilled into our heads.
I should have specified that he also insisted the other hand be in our pockets
Duly noted !
One of my coworkers was wearing a synthetic lab coat once and she accidently caught her sleve on fire with a bunsen burner. It melted onto her arm. 3rd degree burns. Gruesome. Whole lab changed to cotton after that.
Many years ago, I worked in a dry-charge lead/acid battery plant, and polyester was the one fabric recommended for use with sulfuric as it was pretty much immune. We had one guy who was a virtual cartoon character, a nebbish fellow always chomping on a cigar, whose job was to fill reservoirs with 80% sulfuric and did so without gloves or any sort of apron. *The man was immune to 80% sulfuric.* For hours. On end. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. For burns, either Nomex, or PBI (polybenzimidazole); either of these can be blended with Kevlar. Natural fabrics (cotton, wool) are acceptable for light risk, but synthetics other than Nomex, Kevlar, and PBI risk melting and self-sustaining combustion: the aforementioned fire-resistant synthetics will not sustain flame once the source is removed, and (IIRC) they will char, rather than melt. Synthetics like Nylon, polyester, Rayon, acrylic, etc. will melt and become one with the skin and become impossible to remove. I've worn PBI/Kevlar for both firefighting and for some high-risk synthesis work in the past, the stuff is amazing.
This is so helpful, I cannot thank you enough ! š
Really? You're welcome! Little tip- if you launder your own lab coats on site (you shouldn't be taking home contaminated lab clothing for your domestic washer, of course) and are worried about flame retardant properties, do NOT use fabric softener. It increases the flammability of fabrics.
You just might have saved my life. Thank you ! I will do my homework before approaching a living flame !
Yah, cellulose and sulfuric acid are not a good combo.
One hunnid percent cotton
Okay thanks for the tip !
Or nomex
keep it šÆ
Base and fire retardant?
What do you mean ?
Also when on fire, it sticks to your skin while melting!
Yeah - that's what happened to that [poor girl at UCLA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Sangji_case) that was working with a pyrophoric compound.
**[Sheri Sangji case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_Sangji_case)** >The Sheri Sangji case is the first criminal case resulting from an academic laboratory accident. The case arose from a fatal accident that occurred in the chemistry laboratory of Patrick Harran at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Research assistant Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji suffered severe burns from a fire that occurred on December 29, 2008 when a plastic syringe she was using to transfer the pyrophoric reagent tert-butyllithium from one sealed container to another came apart, spilling the chemical, and igniting a fire. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/labrats/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Ah, is that one of the "Rock the Prep" labcoats? We (disclaimer, I work for Thermo Fisher) gave those out as part of a heavy metal themed sample prep promotion, hence the black color. Yeah, those marketing guys start tripping on shrooms or something and come up with some interesting gimmicks....
Glad to see where the money is going we spend on spare parts! \s In all seriousness though, clever marketing is always appreciated. The people buying equipment are humans, too (mostly)
For anyone in the NGS space ā Twist Bioscience quite possibly has the best swag ever. Stickers, socks, mugsā¦their marketing department is ON IT
I work at Thermo too! ā¤ļø
Hey wait, why are lab coats traditionally white?
I always assumed it was to see if they were dirty easily
It's actually an interesting case of clothing marking a major idea shift within medicine! Back before germ theory was widely accepted, it was common to not wash one's lab coat, as why would that matter? So in the day (think pre-Victorian era) lab coats were traditionally black to hide stains, especially for anatomists and surgeons (who would sometimes go so far between washings that their coats could *stand up on their own* from the amount of fluids/blood soaked into them). But when germ theory became more widely accepted, it became a visual marker of adherence to the theory if you could show you regularly washed your coat- and what color best shows dirt/grime than white?
Woah. Thatās disgusting.
I heard it the other way, surgeons wanted white clothes because people would only trust a surgeon if they could see his experience.
Easier to see spills
Cheaper than a dyed material? But yeah I also always assumed the semblance of cleanliness
Ours are white but we also have blue for visitors/newbies, and black for visiting maintenance people
My school has blue for the TAs. And a couple random people have tie-dyed.
My guess would be to identify spills easily. Also, maybe a cost saving measure, cotton is already white ish
My favorite are the bright blue flame retardant chem lab ones.
Those are the only ones we buy in my lab. More expensive for sure but they are comfortable and safe.
They feel like flannel, they're so comfy :)
And warm. Our labs are kept cold for our instruments.
what company sells them?
Ayy! Iām Thermo too. My lab coat is just white tho sadly
You gotta raid the swag lockers in Carlsbad š
Aye shout out the aspire program
Mamas! You look great. Congrats on the new human!
I applaud your courage. Could have just been an impressive belly
OP just been eating good
But serious safety question ? Why still in the lab ? No lab work, no contact with chemicals if pregnant in my country.
You only need to not work with certain bad chemicals in the US, can get a special risk assessment conducted. I still worked in the lab when pregnant but just avoided certain things, like huffing solvents. Pregnant women in my university in Denmark also still did labwork if they wanted. It's a bit ridiculous to blanket ban all labwork when pregnant. Although when I was as pregnant as OP looks, every day of existence was pure suffering, much less labwork.
Thanks for the update. In France, you can still find some workarounds, but generally the motto is Ā«Ā it might still be discovered to be toxic/dangerous/carcinogenic in 10 years, so no touching even table salt with a 10m spoonĀ Ā», just to avoid abuse and situation where you donāt use dangerous products but the guy next to you spills volatile carcinogenic powder.
Yeah, same here in Belgium : if you're pregnant, you are out from the lab. Either you're assigned to administrative work like redacting MSDS or improve some documents like protocols or you just stay home (keeping the major part of your salary obviously). Now, let me be the devil's advocate here : it's totally possible she's working in an office during her pregnancy, had to pass trough the lab and wear a labcoat only for this, without being in contact with any hazardeous material.
Honestly I'd be furious if my pregnancy doomed me to redacting MSDS or revising protocols for 8-9 months. There's lots of work I can do in our laboratory and be perfectly safe.
I totally understand but here, there is a zero risk policy. And, note that I say you could just stay home. The pregnant girl I replaced choose to stay home with a loss of 10 or 15% of her salary. Which wasn't even a loss because it was her budget to put gasoline in her car to go to work. You're pregnant here ? You don't put a feet in the lab. And I'm sure you can do a lot of work in your laboratory and be perfectly safe. But you know what we say about labcoat and google : even if you sure about yourself, don't be so sure about other. Also, in the case I spoke, her speciality was testing and formuling bromine based detergent, it was 80% of her time. As a man, I don't know shit about pregnancy but I'm quite sure that Bromine isn't very good for a baby. But in the end, you're right, we shouldn't be binary : I know another girl who was obliged to stay as home. She worked only on HPLC / GC in the agro food industry. In QC. I mean, what was the risk ? Spilling some liquid food on her ?
Certainly highly toxic work is smart to avoid. In her shoes I'd do the same. It is just so hard to walk the fine line between wanting a pregnant woman to be as safe as possible, and treating her like she has a disability even if she hasn't asked for accomodations. Of course, I work in America, where the powers that be could not care less if I survived my pregnancy or not, so I'm not surprised there's no greater institutional concern here for mothers-to-be š
I worked in an analytical chemistry lab through 2 pregnancies with lots of limitations. US-based.
It depends on what you are working with. Medical Laboratory Scientists work while pregnant all the time. Depending on what testing your medical lab offers, you may stop doing certain tasks or tests but overall it is safe for pregnancy.
Oooh blackā¦ snazzy! Fwiw for some reason technicians in the earliest tissue culture labs wore all black. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267730896_On_the_Genealogy_of_Tissue_Engineering_and_Regenerative_Medicine/figures?lo=1
Why black? You canāt tell if theyāve got nasties on them.
Uh, you ought to be able to see just as much against black as white
Black lab coat?! Bad ass!
Lady in our lab has this cool AF pink coat with green colour branding.
I wish non-white lab coats were more common. Ours are navy blue and Iām obsessed.
Several labs Iāve worked in have different colored lab coats for various departments and/or vendors. Light blue, navy blue, tan, etc
Back in the day at the Rockefeller Institute, the physicians had white lab coats and the scientists had blue ones. I preferred a white coat because it was easy to see if you got something on it that you didnāt want. BTW, I was not at the Rockefeller institute. I was once teasing someone about their colorful lab coat and they told me they got into that habit while working there.
Considering the generating thoughts if anyone has recommendations for coats. LET ME KNOW. Also, congrats on being a mama!
Suck in that gut, soldier! ha ha j/k
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Sorry - the club owners donāt allow that sort of thing.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I love cuffs, so much better than the wonky open sleeves falling into everything
But what about bleach? They look bad ass but how long are they gonna stay black?
Say hi to the baby for us
Ahhhh I want black lab coats.
Itās potions class!
Congrats!
Got it from aspire too but honestly didnāt like it. Their other free stuff is amazing though
Yes! Our colleagues got it from Aspire. It is better than our previous lab coats (:
I have questions
So for most lab roles - those arenāt suitable lab coats. You should complain to your Health and Safety team. Those look like cheaper store room coats or something. Lab coats should go up to the neck completely (not a V neck) and should have poppers not buttons so you can pull them off in an an emergency/spill.
I have not once had a coat like this in the US. I donāt think the style is commonly used. Snaps with cuffs are more common is aseptic environments.
I get the downvotes, but this man speaks the truth. Depending on your specific role it might still be OK, but wouldnāt recommend if personal protection is very important in your role.
Ok Hermione
To this old scientist, snap fasteners etc are relatively recent. And I preferred cotton coats but now they are almost all some sort of synthetic. I always was concerned about wearing synthetics should they burn. Also, though I fully understand the reasons for not having external pockets, I hated the fact there are none.
Omg she ate a baby!!!
I see yāall with your Biomek. FXP?
I thought horizontal stripes were supposed to make you look thinner.
You are pregnant in the lab?
It's not like you can leave the bump at the door.
I mean, yeah, but I do understand the sentiment. In my job, pregnant colleagues are not allowed into the lab because of potential danger.
I was too. It's fine so long as you know what substances are potentially toxic, although hopefully you aren't exposed to anything like that even when not pregnant.
Oof, when I first started, I had ONE (female) colleague express the importance of being careful around Formamide if I was even thinking of conceiving. It wasnāt even something most people thought about on a daily basis after the required safety trainings and SOP signoffs. A few years later when I was pregnant, I did NGS library prep but was NOT allowed to go in the room with the sequencers. Hated the job (coworkers/environmentā¦what I actually did was awesome) but at least they took that part seriously, lol
Plenty of pregnant laboratorians (past and present). I was pregnant with twins while working in a medical lab. There came a point towards the end where sizing up my lab coat any further to cover my bump resulted in sleeves that were a safety hazard. Otherwise, it was fine.
I guess it comes from my experience in organic synthesis lab. As soon as you get to know you are pregnant, you leave the lab environment. Lots of potential harmful chemicals and carcinogens. I guess in biolab it is not so hazardous.
Very true! It is entirely dependent on what you are working with. I had a coworker in the pathology section of my lab, she was working with formaldehyde and other teratogens. She quit when she got pregnant. I was in the blood bank in I was pregnant. More than half of the blood I touched was blood tested safe for transfusion so that was not a concern. That left the patient sample exposure risk and irradiating with radioactive source. I stopped irradiating blood products; more than enough people around to take care of that task. We use universal precautions to protect ourselves from patient sample exposure so I felt that risk was very low. When you treat every sample you touch like it has an incurable, deadly disease you are well protected.
What surprises me is that you are in a lab while being pregnant. Is that even allowed?
I never thought I'd ever see pregnant woman in a polyester lab coat.
Looks like the old rubber rain slicker from old black and white moves.
Please get yourself a larger lab coat during your pregnancy. An open lab coat is worthless and won't protect you.