<p>As a lab manager (pharmaceuticals) and a former college student in the sciences and as a former TA teaching labs, I do wonder how I survived my college labs physically intact. I have no doubt they had to eliminate many of the lab assignments in later years due to increased regulations and the serious health threat they posed (working with benzene, working with human blood). And my number one goal as a TA was to keep the undergraduates alive during lab. I had to put out many fires during those days (undergrads don’t always pay attention).</p>
<p>I had the same goal in my professional life, trying to keep the new hires alive, as they trained in the lab. Some of them did quit, as they learned all the safety rules, and the time involved in maintaining safety each day. They often left the sciences completely.</p>
<p>For many years I taught a class for the state on laboratory acquired infections. It doesn’t make the headlines, but we lose scientists every where, not just at Yale, from infections obtained in the lab. And I have learned through inspections that our medical labs, private and public, are not maintained according to the CDC guidelines. There are many labs I would refuse to work in.</p>