GLOVES – the single most important safety device in the lab

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Anatomic, Clinical, equipment, Grosser, histology, process, Routine, safety, staining, xylene

Nitrile gloves, just one choice

The conversation about gloves is an important one and one I’m passionate about.  So many of us remember back in the day how we coverslipped and changed stain lines bare-handed.  How many of us old-school HTs have thyroid issues that started with xylene exposure?!   

Unfortunately there really is not a single glove type that meets our needs with an ‘excellent’ rating in an affordable product allowing full dexterity.  Also, what you have on your hands PRIOR to gloving can reduce the protection.  These include soaps and lotions that can contribute to breaking down the glove faster than if you gloved with perfectly clean skin. 

We’d all love to have a glove that guarantees no skin contact for the duration of the time we need to wear them. FORTUNATELY—there are practices you can do to increase your own protection with gloves rated ‘good’.  Double gloving is one option; however this impedes movement and increases mechanical stress on your hands. If this is your best option, try two sizes—larger one the outer glove (obviously).   If you elect to single-glove, pick at least a  ‘good’ rating and change them frequently—even set a repeat timer based on the permeation rate of the glove type for the solvent and change slightly before the threshold is crossed. 

PVA Food Service Gloves

Any time your gloves swell or pucker, they’ve absorbed the material with which you are working. They are then holding the chemical directly against your skin!  Gloves are cheap compared to long-tem health consequences for repeat chemical exposure.  It is rare to be compensated for these types of illnesses from any employer, plus your quality of life is reduced, probably forever. Really—we’d rather be healthy than have our employer pay for treatment!! Protect yourself to the best of your ability.  No company I’ve ever worked for had issues with glove consumption: re-glove often!!  Make sure your SOP gloving policy allows for re-gloving in chemical processes (vs biohazardous processes) without handwashing to make it easy for your people to protect themselves.

Never use for aromatic hydrocarbon solvents

Take a look at the charts on the links below (I just checked them– no malware attached).  There are dozens of charts like this and a few conflicts on the ratings between charts so test for yourself. There are more chart if you search the internet or your glove providers can usually help.  

Glove composition and chemical composition vary by manufacturer so the differences in the charts are easily explained and support doing your own tests with the products you have in your lab.  Make sure you’re protecting yourself from the chemicals that are in the bottle—don’t assume — read the MSDS.

Supported Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) is best rated but they are clumsy and bulky—not good for our technical use but GREAT for recycling and waste management tasks. They’re re-usable and can be shared for waste handling.  Most of the regular tan ‘exam’ type gloves are like sponges—save them for water-based processes.  The cheap food industry PVA work at a ‘fair to good’ level on most charts and can be changed frequently to give similar protection without the bulk. They aren’t fitted so they’re a little sloppy.  Nitrile are more expensive, but also more comfy, consistently rated ‘good’ but they pucker within about 15-20 minutes of high exposure to xylene(s) such as hand coverlipping.  Any time you change manufacturers, test again. 

 

Keep yourself safe and healthy on the job—pick gloves that work and change them often!!

http://www.allsafetyproducts.biz/page/74172

 http://www.ansellpro.com/download/Ansell_7thEditionChemicalResistanceGuide.pdf

http://www.allsafetyproducts.biz/page/74172

 
 
 

H and E Stain – joining the dinosaurs?

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H & E, health care, histology, industry, new, pathologist, pathology, process, Routine, staining, technology

An article from today’s Dark Daily:

New Way to Look at Tissue Biopsies: Beckman Institute Researchers Develop Low Cost, High-Speed and Stain-free Optical Technology That Could Displace Existing Histopathology Methodologies

Published: March 9 2012  by Pamela Scherer McLeod 

Pathologists would gain new tool to diagnose cancer faster and more accurately, based upon stain-free analysis of tissue

Reading tissue biopsies with a new stain-free method could eventually help pathologists achieve faster and less subjective cancer detection. Should this technology prove viable, it would also displace many of the longstanding tissue preparation methodologies used today in the histopathology laboratory.

Credit a research team from the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (UI) Christie Clinic and at the UI campuses in Urbana and Chicago, with developing this new technology.

They call the technique Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM). According to a story reported by Futurity.org, the technique uses two beams of light.

New Technology Could Help Pathologists Detect Cancer Earlier

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists stated the new technology offers answers to some of the most elusive questions in contemporary biology: how cell growth is regulated and how cell size distributions are maintained. “SLIM can be so valuable for greatly improving the chances of early detection and treatment of cancer,” declared study leader Gabriel Popescu, Ph.D., Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Beckman Institute.

The reason for Popescu’s optimism is SLIM’s capabilities using optical interferometry, or interference patterns, to make accurate measurements of waves at the molecular level. This enables the technique to work with great sensitivity.

Shown above are multi-modal images of prostate biopsy slides of a 5+4 Gleason grade, or high grade tumor. The top row of images are done with standard histological staining. The bottom row of images are done with the stain-free Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM). (Credit: Shamira Sridharan of www.Futurity.org)

According to Mustafa Mir, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering and a first author of the project paper, SLIM is capable of measuring mass with a sensitivity of one femtogram, or one thousandth of the mass of a cubic micron of water.

“What that means is that only a small number of molecules arranged in a certain way are enough to give us the optical signal that something is going to happen here,” Popescu explained.

The technology works through a combination of phase-contrast microscopy and holography. It does not need staining or any other special preparation of the tissue to be analyzed. It is also completely non-invasive. This means that scientists can visualize nanoscale structures quantitatively and study ongoing cell function in situ.

“Ideally, we would like to detect cancer at the single-cell level,” Popescu stated. This would enable scientists to find a cell that looks abnormal early on, allowing treatment where the process is still reversible. “We know that the disease starts at the nanoscale, at the molecular level, and we think we have the proper tool to catch these early events,” he added.

With Current Staining Method, Pathologists Disagree 20% of the Time

SLIM offers revolutionary advantages over current staining technology. Its optical maps report morphological properties of tissues and cells that cannot be recovered by common stains, including hematoxylin and eosin, Futurity reported. This provides objective evaluations of structural data such as tumor margins that can be difficult for pathologists to assess with current methodologies.

“A significant advantage over existing methods is that we can measure all types of cells… while maintaining the sensitivity and the quantitative information that we get,” Mir stated in a story by MedGadget.

According to Popescu, use of SLIM technology, along with a fluorescent reporter, could have broader implications in understanding the effects of cancer treatments and other forms of therapy on the fundamental process of cell growth. “By using [the combined technologies], we were also able to differentiate how the cells regulate their growth in different stages of their lifecycle,” he stated.

“We think that the most important advantage of SLIM is that it provides quantitative, objective information,” Popescu observed in Futurity. “Right now, in the clinic, the diagnosis is subjective; it’s a human that does it. There are studies showing that two pathologists agree on a diagnosis only four out of five times.”

Popescu described the ability to actually predict information about the outcome of the patient as the Holy Grail of the research. As an example, he noted SLIM’s potential to help determine the likelihood of recurrence following surgery. “This, right now, is actually a 50/50 guess,” he observed.

According to Popescu, SLIM’s highly automatic procedure, together with the low cost and high-speed associated with the absence of staining, could make “a significant impact in pathology at a global scale.”

Of course, it will take years before tissue analysis solutions incorporating Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM) are ready for daily use by  anatomic pathologists. Yet, it is the pipeline of transformative technologies like that which promise to give Clinical laboratory professionals new capabilities to diagnose disease more accurately and earlier. In turn, this improves the value that laboratory medicine brings to physicians, patients, and payers.

—Pamela Scherer McLeod

Read more: New Way to Look at Tissue Biopsies: Beckman Institute Researchers Develop Low Cost, High-Speed and Stain-free Optical Technology That Could Displace Existing Histopathology Methodologies | Dark Daily http://www.darkdaily.com/new-way-to-look-at-tissue-biopsies-beckman-institute-researchers-develop-low-cost-high-speed-and-stain-free-optical-technology-that-could-displace-existing-histopathology-methodologies-030912#ixzz1oe5evQMp