• Question: Have you ever been almost injured yourself badly while doing a risky experiment?

    Asked by anon-292679 on 22 Apr 2021.
    • Photo: Rebecca Reed

      Rebecca Reed answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      I’ve not had any near misses, but taking things in and out of the big liquid nitrogen tank where I store batches of cells is always a bit risky. I have to reach up and in with big gloves on to get the rack I need – the tank is tall and I’m short so it’s hard to lift the rack high enough to get it out. A stool helps though!

      Bit boring but I think the only lab-related injury I’ve had is when someone else opened the heavy walk-in-fridge door into me as I was walking down the corridor. Got a lovely bruised arm for that one.

    • Photo: Rosie Goodburn

      Rosie Goodburn answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      I once went into an MRI scanner room with a key in my pocket.
      .
      MRI produces a very strong magnetic field that presents something we call the projectile effect. It means that objects which are “ferromagnetic” (things that a magnet will stick to) are liable to fly out of your hands, through the air, towards the scanner with speed – striking the scanner or anything in its path!
      .
      Luckily, the key didn’t come out of my pocket and no one else was in the room! Phew!

    • Photo: Steve Briddon

      Steve Briddon answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      Fortunately, no, although I have witnessed a couple of near misses in the lab. Once, another scientist was getting cells out of the liquid nitrogen store (see Rebecca’s response). When the cells come out, they are in small tubes and the nitrogen boils and expands very quickly. If there is a small amount of liquid nitrogen in the tube, it can explode. This one did and made a HUGE bang. Fortunately, my colleague was wearing their face visor and wasn’t injured by the broken bits of tube flying around.

      There are lots of dangerous things in the average laboratory, but we have very strict rules and assessments that make doing the experiments safe on the whole.

    • Photo: Kip Heath

      Kip Heath answered on 22 Apr 2021:

      I have a couple of scars on my fingers from chopping up fingernails with a scalpel. It was when I worked in bacteriology and we used to look for fungal infections in the fingernails.

    • Photo: Ross Low

      Ross Low answered on 23 Apr 2021:

      Science is generally very safe. Even though we sometimes use things that could be dangerous we have a lot of safety in place to make sure we’re not hurt. In my opinion, the most dangerous things are when you think they’re safe.
      I once put some dry ice (carbon dioxide that’s frozen solid) in a box in the lab. the carbon dioxide started to evaporate and expand and eventually, the box exploded! Luckily nobody was hurt but it only happened because I wasn’t concentrating and thought it was safe.

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