Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!aecom!werner
From: werner@aecom.yu.edu (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Ethidium Br
Message-ID: <2594@aecom.yu.edu>
Date: 15 Nov 89 05:56:34 GMT
References: <60608@tiger.oxy.edu> <1030@uwm.edu> <13854@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 28

In article <13854@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, eesnyder@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Eric E. Snyder) writes:
> In article <1030@uwm.edu> stevelee@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (The Anti-Theist Named Steve) writes:
> 
> Ok, net people, just how dangerous is ethidium bromide?  I get shit in the 
> lab constantly for slopping my gel buffers all over the place.... 

	Shame on you. Stop slopping you buffers.

	In New York, Agarose gels with Ethidium in them count as ethidium
waste and need to disposed of separately.  Not so in Connecticut, they're
just normal trash. Only Ethidium/Cesium gradients require the special
treatment.  Of course it is a matter of amounts,  I average approximately
1 mg per year,. maybe two, in ethidium stained gels ( 8-12 ul of 1 mg/ml per
gel.  That's several hundred gels a year.

	Yes, it's carcinogenic.  Yes, it makes you glow in the dark. Yes,
it breaks down over a period of time in the environment. No, it doesn't
really pass through the skin very well, and of course, the skin is dead
anyway.  Still, I wear gloves when I open the tube, but not necessarily
all the time when I touch the gel.  
	It gets about the same respect as 35S.
~.

-- 
	        Craig Werner   (future MD/PhD, 4.5 years down, 2.5 to go)
	     werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
              (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
           "My philosophy, like color TV, is all there in black and white."