• Question: Why do you work in clean rooms, dressed up in overalls, gloves, masks and goggles?

    Asked by aliceredington17 to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 14 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 14 Mar 2013:


      I don’t really do any lab work now, but I do work with a lot of people who do. I visited a biosafety level 4 laboratory last year though, which is the highest level you get…these labs are used for the most dangerous infectious diseases in the world, things like ebola. The people who work in there have to wear a big space suit type thing, which is plugged into an air supply, so the air comes directly into their suit. Sometimes you see a lab like that in films – there was one in Contagion which was out a couple of years ago! I found it quite exciting to be looking in the lab, but I didn’t really want to get too close…!

    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 14 Mar 2013:


      Sometimes you have to wear all those things because you have to make sure that the things that you are working with don’t get on you or other people because they are dangerous. Other times its because you have to make sure that the material you are working with stays clean. This could be for many reasons.

      The main reason that clean labs are used in the building that I work in is because people want to know what the chemical composition of something is, like a rock or a cell, or what DNA a cell has. If you got anything in your sample by accident, like one of your own cells, or some dust or something, then when you did the analysis to find out the DNA you might just be looking at your own DNA, and when you wanted to know the chemical composition you would be seeing the chemical composition of the dust or dirt as well.

      So you wear all of those things so that your samples don’t get contaminated so that you know that you have the right answer when you analyse them.

    • Photo: Sandra Phinbow

      Sandra Phinbow answered on 15 Mar 2013:


      Some time ago I used to be a clean room consultant and I went to drug manufacturing clean rooms to advise them on how to maintain the cleanliness of their clean room.

      There are various grades/limits of clean room, it’s pretty much about air flow through the lab, the direction of the air flow and how many cycles of air changes there are. Some clean rooms are super clean and have up to 600 air changes per hour, whilst some clean rooms only need 20 air changes per hour.

      There is a whole area of science and engineering into designing a cleanroom and maintaining it to keep it within limits.

      I went to see some PhD space students a couple of years ago who were going to use a new clean room for their experiments – they were very surprised and unhappy at the cleaning schedule I formulated for them to keep them within limits!

      And even more upset when I said no make up, no perfume, no body sprays, no unauthourised pencils, no excessive movements ie messing about. All of which produce particles into the air! And you don’t want that in a clean room.

      They were especially unhappy when I showed them how to actually clean and wipe something in a particular way and that they have to mop the ceilings and walls!

      But if you want a clean room to remain clean then you have to very much limit the particulate into the air. Wearing overalls, masks, gloves and wellies will prevent particles from being shed from the body and clothing etc.

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