Biohazardous materials require special safety precautions and procedures. Follow these guidelines when working with infectious agents:

Personal Hygiene Guidelines

• Wash your hands thoroughly, as indicated below:
  • After working with any biohazard
  • After removing gloves, laboratory coat, and other contaminated protective clothing
  • Before eating, drinking, smoking, or applying cosmetics
  • Before leaving the laboratory area
• Do not touch your face when handling biological material.
• Never eat, drink, smoke, or apply cosmetics in the work area.

Clothing Guidelines

• Always wear a wrap-around gown or scrub suit, gloves, and a surgical mask when working with infectious agents or infected animals.
• Wear gloves over gown cuffs.
• Never wear contact lenses around infectious agents.
• Do not wear potentially contaminated clothing outside the laboratory area.
• To remove contaminated clothing, follow these steps:
• Remove booties from the back.
• Remove head covering from the peak.
• Untie gown while wearing gloves.
• Remove gloves by peeling them from the inside out.
• Remove the gown by slipping your finger under the sleeve cuff of the gown.

Handling Procedures

• Use mechanical pipetting devices.
• Minimize aerosol production.
• Add disinfectant to water baths for infectious substances.
• Use trunnion cups with screw caps for centrifuging procedures. Inspect the tubes before use.
• Use secondary leak-proof containers when transporting samples, cultures, inoculated petri dishes, and other containers of biohazardous materials.

Syringes

Avoid using syringes and needles whenever possible. If a syringe is necessary, minimize your chances of exposure by following these guidelines:

• Use a needle-locking or disposable needle unit.
• Take care not to stick yourself with a used needle.
• Place used syringes into a pan of disinfectant without removing the needles.
• Do not place used syringes in pans containing pipets or other glassware that require sorting.
• Do not recap used needles.
• Dispose of needles in an approved sharps container.

Work Area

• Keep laboratory doors shut when experiments are in progress.
• Limit access to laboratory areas when experiments involve biohazardous agents.
• Ensure that warning signs are posted on laboratory doors. These signs should include the universal biohazard symbol and the approved biosafety level for the laboratory.
• Ensure that vacuum lines have a suitable filter trap.
• Decontaminate work surfaces daily and after each spill.
• Decontaminate all potentially contaminated equipment.
• Transport contaminated materials in leak-proof containers.
• Keep miscellaneous material (i.e., books, journals, etc.) away from contaminated areas.
• Completely decontaminate equipment before having maintenance or repair work done.

Universal Precautions

Clinical and diagnostic laboratories often handle specimens without full knowledge of the material's diagnosis; these specimens may contain infectious agents. To minimize exposure, observe universal precautions when handling any biological specimen. Consider all specimens to be infectious and treat these materials as potentially hazardous.