Instructions to students and safety in the laboratory.

 

Students should work only on their designated seats during practical classes. While working in the laboratory, each student should be in an apron with a nameplate. Never work alone in a practical laboratory.

The student must be careful while working in the laboratory with chemicals, glassware or samples to be tested as they are potentially dangerous if wrongly handled.

Before coming to practical classes, every student shall bring his/her own permanent glass marker pen, notebook, hand-gloves, and practical manual.

All glassware to be used should be rinsed with distilled water before performing the practical exercise.

Do not displace the reagent bottles and instruments from their assigned places.

If the large bottles and beakers, containing solutions/reagents, are heavy in weight, never carry the bottles by holding the neck and the glass-beakers with the help of fingers. Hold them within the grip of both hands, while carrying them from one place to another.

Keep your practical table neat, clean, and free of unwanted reagents and glassware.

While working, do not interchange the stoppers, pipettes, and droppers of reagent and sample bottles.

Do not eat, smoke, or drink in a practical laboratory. Do not store drinking water and edibles in the refrigerator used for keeping reagents, biological samples (urine, blood, etc.), etc.

Do not touch, taste, or smell any chemical, reagent, and solution.

Do not waste chemicals/reagents.

Always use a test tube holder for heating the test tube. While boiling/heating the liquids/ test samples in test tubes, make sure that the boiling solution does not bump out of the test tube and harm your neighbor classmates.

Do not light the burner while using inflammable liquids/reagents/chemicals such as alcohol, ether, benzene, toluene, etc. Do not heat flammable liquids over flame instead use a water bath or electric hot plate. Always keep inflammable liquids/reagents/chemicals away from the burner.

Light the spirit lamp carefully using the only matchbox. Do not throw the burning matchstick into the dustbin.

If any student requires any kind of laboratory items such as glassware, reagents, chemicals, apparatus, etc., he/she should ask the teacher-in-charge/laboratory technician.

In the case of any breakage/damage/accident, report immediately to the teacher-in-charge/laboratory technician, and ask for treatment.

Concentrated/strong acids (H₂SO₄, HCl, etc.), strong alkalies (KOH, NaOH, etc.), and other corrosive, toxic and poisonous reagents should be used carefully. Never do mouth pipetting of them instead of using the pipette pump. Always add the corrosive chemical to water very slowly and not vice versa.

Always use protective gloves while handling toxic chemicals.

Wash your hands after using a toxic chemical.

Mouth pipetting of toxic chemicals is totally forbidden. 

All such chemicals must be under safe custody (locked in a cupboard).

For example KCN, Sodium Nitroprusside, formaldehyde, sodium azide, etc.

Certain chemicals like benzidine (used to detect blood in urine), O-toluidine (used to measure glucose concentration in blood) are carcinogenic (cancer-causing) and should be handled with utmost care avoiding skin contact, inhalation, or ingestion.

Never directly add water to acid because water spurts generating a lot of heat causing the acid to splash out. The addition of acid should be done in small amounts into the water with constant stirring. Highly concentrated acids should be diluted in an ice chest containing ice cubes.