Laboratory Environment Safety Is Important - Here's What You Should Do

Best practices ensure the best functioning of the laboratory. When setting up a laboratory, you have to go through a lot of decisions about licensing, finding genuine laboratory equipment suppliers, and much more. What tops all of it is the safety and maintenance of your lab's environment. Adequate maintenance, cleanliness, disinfection, and an orderly environment are some of the vital things for all laboratories. A cluttered workspace or a biohazard-contaminated area is a threat for both the employees and the visitors. Here are some strategies and protocols by LEI Sales that will help you keep your lab's environment protected.

Timely Disinfection

Because biohazardous materials are hazardous in nature, laboratories, lab benches, and even laboratory equipment should be disinfected after every shift or any instance of a spill. You can use an intermediate level chemical germicide - 10% of the bleach solution is the standard. As a basic everyday practice, you should wipe down the computers, chairs, equipment, and other smaller items such as pens and watches. Laboratory surfaces get contaminated and may cause the laboratorians to catch infections. That's why you should ensure that you have laboratory gloves on during sample handling and clean the entire area after the work is done. Especially during the outbreak of Covid-19, PPEs have become a must-have when performing tasks in labs and healthcare facilities.

Prepare For Accidents

A laboratory is a place where their occurrence of accidents, spills, or reactions of chemicals or biohazardous materials isn't uncommon. They do occur, so it's essential to be prepared with spill clean-up supplies. These events are uncalled for yet, and every laboratory should have resources to handle spills and accidents. The spill kit should have PPE, absorbents, disposable containers, implements for handling broken glassware, and bags. You can also find chemical spill kits but make sure you have sufficient amounts of neutralizers and absorbents. In fact, as a preventive measure, your staff should be trained to handle spill clean-up procedures. You can train them by conducting mock spill drills that will allow them to respond immediately and take necessary actions.

Lab Cleaning Products

While you're in a lab setting, you will need those essential items for your lab's safety. These items include pre-filled spray bottles, canisters of single-use wipes, and containers of fluids. Be extra careful when choosing commercial cleaning products; they should be effective enough to eliminate bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Certain products do not come with disinfecting features, and the labs that use such products inadvertently expose their workers to the risk of infection. On the other hand, some germicides like Staphylococci can rapidly kill bacteria's vegetative forms. There's too much information to process. So, it is best to consult the manufacturer or provider to ensure that the product you've selected is potent enough to disinfect the laboratory thoroughly.

If you have questions about your lab's safety, maintenance, equipment repair, and so on, get in touch with professional, reputed scientific equipment suppliers - LEI Sales. Give us a call; we are here to answer all your queries.