Question: what is the most dangerous thing you have done in the lab?

Dalya Soond answered on 17 Jun 2011:

To be perfectly honest, the work I do is mainly safe and there are many safety procedures in place to ensure that no harm is done to us.

Thinking about it then, the most dangerous things I have done in lab are down to my own stupidity and callousness. 2 things come to mind:

1) Working in the lab when I have migraines and can’t see or walk properly. This is very stupid since there ARE dangers in lab which can be avoided if you have your full vision and decent coordination available. Nonetheless, the worst thing that has happened has been walking into walls and spilling my experiments all over the floor. Sadly, I go through bouts of migraines since I cracked my skull in a car crash when I was 18 and it gets difficult to say ‘I can’t work today or for the next 2-3 months.’ To make sure I am more cautious, I have told a friend in lab who is also the Health and Safety manager for our floor to forcefully evict me from work if she thinks I have a migraine since I am too stubborn to do it myself.

2) Working with a bacteria called Listeria when I was trying to get pregnant. This bacteria is quite a common found on food, especially unpasteurised cheese, and is only dangerous during pregnancy, in the elderly, or people with poor immune systems. I thought it would take at least a year to get pregnant -but it didn’t -and I stopped the project the day I realised I had a little one on the way, but it was super stupid thing to do anyway.