I am a chemist and work in a QC lab. I am 6 weeks pregnant and my work does not have a policy of moving me outside the lab while pregnant. I cannot leave work so I am forced to stay working in the lab. Some of the chemicals I work with are Chloroform, toluene, acetonitrile, dimethyl formamide and others. I do not use these chemicals on a daily basis but maybe once a week or so and I work under the hood with protective gloves.
Minimally, your employer should have provided you with educational materials about bloodborne pathogens which would have provided the information you received from the good folks here. In a lab setting, familiarity with common pathogens, their risk factors, and safety measures will not only prevent lab hazards and error, it will help protect your health and that of your co-workers. Best wishes.
I have HIV contamination fears which I've been handling much better in the past few months thanks to medication and exercises, but I went to the dentist yesterday and my fears have been exacerbated to the maximum. I had profilaxis done and the dentist asked me to close my mouth around the tube that absorbs all the fluids. Then this morning I read that it's a bad practica and can cause cross contamination.
Power-generating equipment, arc welding equipment and powerful magnets (as in medical devices, heavy equipment or motors) can inhibit pulse generators. Patients who work with or near such equipment should know that their pacemakers may not work properly in those conditions.
Cellphonelphones available in the United States (less than 3 watts) don't seem to damage pulse generators or affect how the pacemaker works.
the question is whether we can rely on labs or we should be checking equipment manufacturer and quality as it is not required in devloped world.
People who never been to africa may think that there are no chances of sub standard processes but being here we know the facts.
We have John Hopkins Hospital Here ..shall I go for ELISA test there?
However, I work for a company that builds lab equipment that tests for both strep and gonorrhea and a week or two before I showed symptoms a machine was returned from a lab that may not have been decontaminated. So, is it possible I acquired it through that? Or that I had something else and had a FP result? Or that one had a FN result?
I am so scared:) I was at a discount store and poked my hand with a safety pin that was taken apart, basically mangled. It looked like somebody had twisted it. It was on top of a clothing rack. It drew blood on me. The store had just opened and I am wondering if someone had purposely placed it there. Can I get hiv fro it and if not can you explain why? Thank you I am so scared!!!!
I work in a lab that does all kinds of testing. In one area of the lab we peform HIV testing on thousands of samples on a particular instrument that does the EIA method detecting for antibodies. If it is positive we send it out for a Western blot to another lab.
Anyways, one of the samples came back as HIV positive. I was wearing gloves and safety glasses at the time, and I took the HIV positive sample and capped it. At that moment, I felt like something touched my nose and my mouth.
A lot depends on what tests were done and if they had to send the blood work to a lab in another part of the country to be analyzed.
I do know that my viral load test results take a little less than 1 week to get back because they have to send the blood to some other place, but simple tests like surface antigen can be done in my regular doctors office and the results are ready the same day.
It sounds like your doctor uses the same sort of equipment that used to be routine (20+ years ago), i.e. a sterile bacteriological loop. These were the norm among many STD specialists before modern disposalble swabs becamse widely available. And my guess the scalpel blade was disposable, single-use.
There is no reasonable possibility the doctor does not carefully sterilizes the loop (and scalpel, if not disposablet) between patients.
I just cant believe how much of a problem this has become.
Is it contaminated water? Is it run off? Is it turning manure in the soil at the wrong times like (not waiting for fall, or not waiting for it to be (oooh, I know the word)--anyway--when its all dried up and dust like.
Or is it the factory? (dirty equipment)
Or is it people deficating in the fields?
Or is it wild animal leavings?
These people need to be doing everything they can to insure food safety.
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