Help! ethidium bromide accident!
Pedro Lourenco
experience of having the skin contaminated with ethidium bromide.
Last week at the end of the day I was in the lab fixing the plumbing of
pulse field equipment without gloves (big mistake, I am usually very
careful), trusting to have no problem since nobody was supposed to run gels
with EB on that equipment. Unfortunately someone used the equipment with a
gel with EB. I washed my hands very well afterwards and went home. In the
evening, I started to feel a little rash and to notice a slightly pink
coloration in some zones of my skin. I had a sudden presentiment and I
immediately thought of ethidium bromide.
In the next morning I checked my hands with UV light and I found out that
they were lightly glowing specially in two more intense spots in their back
(surprisingly the palm of the hands didn't show any sign of glowing).
I have to tell that I got pretty scared and I went to a doctor in that same
day. The doctor didn't know what to do since I had no acute symptoms and the
alterations on of my skin coloration were not obvious. The national
toxicology helpline (I'm from Portugal) said that they had no idea of that
compound. The doctor and the person in the toxicology helpline (also a
doctor) talked to each other and concluded that there was nothing much to do
except wash very well the hands with soap and not put anything that could
permeate the compound inside the body like solvents or creams. They also
said to relax since the chemical I hadn't wash in first day would be
attached to my skin and wouldn't pose a big danger to other people (can
anybody confirm?).
Since UV can also do serious harm to your skin, I didn't check my hands
until today.
Today (almost one week later) I checked my hands with a not very potent blue
UV light I i only noticed a very slight EB glowing in the back of one hand.
Next I decided to risk and I checked in the lab UV table.
Though diminished a little glow was still there.
Now I am getting nervous!
Anybody know for experience how long is going to last the presence of EB in
the skin?
I presume that EB is bonded to proteins and DNA in my epidermis, which is
constituted by dead skin, but do you think it is dangerous to my family.
The concentration of EB in the buffer that had contact with my hands should
be less than 0.01 micrograms/ml.
Does anybody had similar experiences in the lab?
Thank you in advance
Pedro Lourenco
David Micklem
<pedro.l...@mail.ineti.pt> wrote:
Assuming this isn't a troll...
To put it in perspective, in the modified Ames test 5 micrograms of
ethidium bromide (ie far far far far more than you are likely to have
exposed your skin to) produces roughly 18 times _fewer_ revertants than
the condensate from a _single_ cigarette (PNAS 1975, vol 72,
p5135-5139).
Add to that the fact that _most if not all_ of the ethidium bromide
will have bound to protein in your skin, and got nowhere near your DNA.
The risk to you from this exposure is miniscule. I believe that it is
incredibly unlikely that your rash had anything to do with ethidium
bromide.
The UV light probably did your DNA more harm. Generally speaking, the
UV transilluminator you use to look at your gels is probably much more
of a real hazard to your health than the ethidium bromide is. (I know
lots of people who are ultra-paranoid about ethidium bromide, but have
managed to give themselves a UV sunburn off the transilluminator.
Totally daft.)
Relax, enjoy life.
David
--
D.R. Micklem, Time flies like an arrow...
Dept. of Genetics, Fruit flies like a banana.
Cambridge University, Email:drm21 at mole dot bio dot cam dot ac dot uk.
Cambridge, UK Phone: +44 (1223) 766336
Unsolicited email will incur a US$100 processing charge.
S.Ballal
I guess David has told you most of the things about EtBR. The possible
harm it can do is really very very less, esp the amount used in gels.
I had seen much worse accident with powdered EtBr spreading all over
the lab spilled from a hand of a user. Fortunately they all healthy
till date (about 5 years now)
So don't worry and enjoy.
S.Ballal
http://www.indusbio.co.in
David Micklem <dmic...@cmgm.nospam.invalid> wrote in message news:<271120022318027589%dmic...@cmgm.nospam.invalid>...
Michael Witty
it may even be that the fluorescence on your hand is _not_
ethidium bromide, but another compound you came into contact with. Plenty
of fluorescent compounds exist. I also agree with the previous comments.
Regards, Mike.
Bev A. Kupf
As an example, some of the talcums used in powdered gloves are quite
fluorescent.
Bev
--
Bev A. Kupf
Bev's House of Pancakes
Sergio
D.K. wrote:
> Third, it is really not a potent carcinogene - there is
> really no good data showing it has any carcinogeneic properteis
> on in vivo level (rats drank it on the order of g/kg and were OK).
Any reference about this last subject?? Just to convince some
ethidium-paranoic coworkers.
I have to say that I haven't searched on PubMed yet, but if you could
point me to a good paper I'll be very grateful.
Sergio
Wolfgang Schechinger
>
>
>D.K. wrote:
>
>> Third, it is really not a potent carcinogene - there is
>> really no good data showing it has any carcinogeneic properteis
>> on in vivo level (rats drank it on the order of g/kg and were OK).
>
>Any reference about this last subject?? Just to convince some
>ethidium-paranoic coworkers.
The only way to convince them might be to kill them. Even when speaking out
the word that must not be said loudly, one should wear a face mask and gloves.
Regards,
Wo
---
Duncan Clark
28 Nov 2002, Sergio <yok...@yahoo.com> penned the following literary
masterpiece:
>Any reference about this last subject?? Just to convince some
>ethidium-paranoic coworkers.
>I have to say that I haven't searched on PubMed yet, but if you could
>point me to a good paper I'll be very grateful.
Merck Index under Homidium. It has been used for years by Vets as a
therapeutic anti-protozoal drug.
It also says:
" Bitter tasting dark red crystals ......."
So what happened to the taster :)
Duncan
--
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing noise they make as
they go flying by.
Duncan Clark
GeneSys Ltd.
Duncan Clark
Thu, 28 Nov 2002, D.K. <d...@no.email.thankstospam.net> penned the
following literary masterpiece:
>I remember people posting refs to prove the point.
It will be in the bionet archives or a trawl of Google groups will find
them.
Peter Ashby
wrote:
>
> D.K. wrote:
>
> > Third, it is really not a potent carcinogene - there is
> > really no good data showing it has any carcinogeneic properteis
> > on in vivo level (rats drank it on the order of g/kg and were OK).
>
> Any reference about this last subject?? Just to convince some
> ethidium-paranoic coworkers.
I know what you mean I once overheard some coworkers obsessing about it.
The language they were using would have been appropriate for an
infective encysted pathogen. I wear gloves and am careful, but there is
a big difference between that and obsession.
Peter
--
Peter Ashby
Wellcome Trust Biocentre
University of Dundee, Scotland
Reverse the Spam and remove to email me.
Wolfgang Schechinger
1 year ago, I performed an extensive PubMed search to find out about the
real toxicity of EtBr. I couldn't find anything useful. Despite that,
mainly the companies who are selling appliances for decontamination and
detoxification claim that EtBr was highly toxic. I do not want to abgrogate
the potential hazard of EtBr since it binds to DNA and some people
successfully have been using it to introduce frameshifts in PCR, so one
should exercise care when handling the chemical, mainly when using the
powder. Actually, EtBr is a nice chemical since if you spill it, you'll
find it by color or at least by UV.
BTW, did anyone ever think of the fate of mutagens excreted by people who
receive cytostatic drugs for cancer treatment? They all are going down the
drain and nobody ever cares...
Happy weekend,
Wolfgang
>
>I know what you mean I once overheard some coworkers obsessing about it.
>The language they were using would have been appropriate for an
>infective encysted pathogen. I wear gloves and am careful, but there is
>a big difference between that and obsession.
>
---
Pedro Lourenco
pharmaceutical company which produces EB for
using as medicine against trypanosomosis in cattle by intramuscular
injection of 1mg/kg. And it seems that the cattle is used for meat and milk
production.
I also found recent articles from several authors (just put "homidium
veterinary" in pubmed and you find them) defending the use of EB in animals
tropical areas against protozoan infection without refering the hazards of
manipulating it.
Jens Mollerup
Hi Pedro and Netters,
Actually a fraction of the danish population used EtBr as a marker of
the amount of plaque or bacteria sitting on our teeth. This was a help
to guide children to be better to brush their teeth! After brushing
the teeth a tablet with EtBr were crushed in your mouth and the color
on the teeth indicated whether you were brushing your teeth properly!
I am not kidding! I remember my self that I did this several times at
an age of about 10-12 years in the late seventies and eighties! Do not
know whether this is still practice!
So Pedro I think you should not worry to much!!!
Cheers
Jens
Wolfgang Schechinger
commercial for a Blendax toothpaste maybe 10 years ago. Did they write it's
EtBr in the tablets or do you just have the evidence by using the pills for
stanining agarose gels ;-)
BTW anyone has an idea if the EtBr trypanosome cure is available outside
from Africa and if it might be a cheap source for staining solutions?
Anyway, 25mg per cow seems to be pretty close to the final concentration
commonly used in agarose gel electrophoresis.
(That now reminds me of the CowAlbi whole cow transfection method but
that's completely OT)
Regards,
Wo)
>Hi Pedro and Netters,
>Actually a fraction of the danish population used EtBr as a marker of
>the amount of plaque or bacteria sitting on our teeth. This was a help
>to guide children to be better to brush their teeth! After brushing
>the teeth a tablet with EtBr were crushed in your mouth and the color
>on the teeth indicated whether you were brushing your teeth properly!
>I am not kidding! I remember my self that I did this several times at
>an age of about 10-12 years in the late seventies and eighties! Do not
>know whether this is still practice!
>So Pedro I think you should not worry to much!!!
>
>Cheers
>Jens
>
>
---
Susanne
Wolfgang Schechinger wrote:
>Jens, I always wondered what that red dye had been they used in german TV
>commercial for a Blendax toothpaste maybe 10 years ago. Did they write it's
>EtBr in the tablets or do you just have the evidence by using the pills for
>stanining agarose gels ;-)
>
>
>
I think this is an urban legend... ok laboratory legend because who else
knows EtBr.
Susanne
Wolfgang Schechinger
tuned
(Iäm just curious, wanting to collect some arguments for teasing people who
start to panic when they see some EtBr outside the toxics cabinet)
BTW, People stop eating french fries and potato chips in Switzerland becaue
of acrylamide now?
Regards,
Wo
>>
>
>I think this is an urban legend... ok laboratory legend because who else
>knows EtBr.
>
>Susanne
>
>
---
Jens Mollerup
news:3DEE1872...@hotmail.com...
Well actually (and unfortunately) it is not! A lector at my institute told
me that his children came home with these pills. They contained ethidium
bromide and also proflavin and other stuff!! Nice cocktail ;)! He actually
responded and called the state authority medical council or doctor (I don't
know the name for this in English - in danish its "embedslægen"). After this
(I do not know how long) these "nice red pills" should have been taken of
the market! It was somewhere in the seventies!
By the way dentist often uses "harsh stuff", as long as it only affects your
teeth ....... ?
AT the moment I am tryin to find evidence for the content of these pills!
Jens
Jens Mollerup
Just found this!!! But better evidence would off course be needed!
TI: Vitalfarbung von Plaque-Mikroorganismen mit Fluoresceindiacetat und
Ethidiumbromid.
[Vital staining of plaque microorganisms using fluorescein diacetate and
ethidium bromide]
AU: Netuschil,-L
SO: Dtsch-Zahnarztl-Z. 1983 Oct; 38(10): 914-7
JN: Deutsche-zahnarztliche-Zeitschrift
IS: 0012-1029
PY: 1983
LA: German; Non-English
CP: GERMANY,-WEST
MJME: *Dental-Plaque-microbiology; *Ethidium-diagnostic-use;
*Fluoresceins-diagnostic-use
MIME: Microscopy,-Fluorescence; Staining-and-Labeling-methods;
Streptococcus-mutans-isolation-and-purification
TG: English-Abstract; Human
PT: Journal-Article
SH: microbiology; diagnostic-use; methods; isolation-and-purification
CAS: 0; 3546-21-2; 596-09-8
PN: Fluoresceins; Ethidium; 3',6'-diacetylfluorescein
JC: Dentistry
SB: Dental; Index-Medicus
UD: 20001218
DA: 19840107
DR: 20001218
CD: 19840107
RO: National-Library-of-Medicine
UI: 6196173
AN: 84057394
WEBLH: Cosmos
Cheers
Jens
Dr Engelbert Buxbaum
> BTW, did anyone ever think of the fate of mutagens excreted by people who
> receive cytostatic drugs for cancer treatment? They all are going down the
> drain and nobody ever cares...
Not only cytostatica, but also radioactive compounds used for diagnosis
and therapy (for example 10 mCi 32P i.v. for certain forms of blood
cancer).
A collegue of mine once had a thyroid check. Afterwards he went back to
work, and of course wore his lab coat, including dosimeter badge. When
he entered the lab, a hand-foot monitor at the other side of the room
went into overdrive. A month later, when the results from the badge came
back, all hell broke loose.
Ian A. York
Dr Engelbert Buxbaum <engelber...@web.de> wrote:
>
>A collegue of mine once had a thyroid check. Afterwards he went back to
>work, and of course wore his lab coat, including dosimeter badge. When
>he entered the lab, a hand-foot monitor at the other side of the room
>went into overdrive. A month later, when the results from the badge came
>back, all hell broke loose.
A friend of mine had a thyroid check. He casually wandered into our
neighbour's lab, where they did a lot of 32P work, chatted for a bit, and
as he started to leave he oh-so-casually picked up a Geiger counter and
flicked it on. It screamed, of course, and he placidly turned it off and
wandered out of the lab as everyone else sprinted, bug-eyed, to the decon
and started frantically scrubbing at the innocent lab bench where he'd
been standing.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Peter Ashby
> A collegue of mine once had a thyroid check. Afterwards he went back to
> work, and of course wore his lab coat, including dosimeter badge. When
> he entered the lab, a hand-foot monitor at the other side of the room
> went into overdrive. A month later, when the results from the badge came
> back, all hell broke loose.
I had a bone scan once. In between the injection and the scan I wandered
around the Natural History Museum in London for a couple of hours while
the label spread around my system. I don't know the dose but the
incompetent doctor who tried to inject it seemed very scared of the
syringe even though it was well contained in lead sheath. I don't recall
doing any hot room work afterward so I never counted myself.
Peter Ashby
huba...@gmx.de (Wolfgang Schechinger) wrote:
>
> BTW, People stop eating french fries and potato chips in Switzerland becaue
> of acrylamide now?
IIRC that research was Swedish. I haven't seen any figures for
consumption. MInd you not even acrylamide would persuade Scots not to
eat fried anything.
Peter Ashby
iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
> A friend of mine had a thyroid check. He casually wandered into our
> neighbour's lab, where they did a lot of 32P work, chatted for a bit, and
> as he started to leave he oh-so-casually picked up a Geiger counter and
> flicked it on. It screamed, of course, and he placidly turned it off and
> wandered out of the lab as everyone else sprinted, bug-eyed, to the decon
> and started frantically scrubbing at the innocent lab bench where he'd
> been standing.
>
Nice one. Not a stunt to pull during a safety audit of the hotroom
though. That could result in some serious aggravation.
Nick Theodorakis
York) wrote:
>In article <aspudu$316$02$1...@news.t-online.com>,
>Dr Engelbert Buxbaum <engelber...@web.de> wrote:
>>
>>A collegue of mine once had a thyroid check. Afterwards he went back to
>>work, and of course wore his lab coat, including dosimeter badge. When
>>he entered the lab, a hand-foot monitor at the other side of the room
>>went into overdrive. A month later, when the results from the badge came
>>back, all hell broke loose.
>
>A friend of mine had a thyroid check. He casually wandered into our
>neighbour's lab, where they did a lot of 32P work, chatted for a bit, and
>as he started to leave he oh-so-casually picked up a Geiger counter and
>flicked it on. It screamed, of course, and he placidly turned it off and
>wandered out of the lab as everyone else sprinted, bug-eyed, to the decon
>and started frantically scrubbing at the innocent lab bench where he'd
>been standing.
ISTR that about 5 mCi (yes, that's milli) of 131I is used for a
diagnostic thyroid scan, and greater than 100 mCi for a therapeutic
dose, such as for Grave's disease.
Once upon a time, I myself have been injected with 5 mCi of
radioactive thallium (I forget the isotope -- but it's a gamma
emitter) for a medical test. When I got back to the lab, the people
said jokingly, "let's see if you are radioactive" and held a G-M
monitor up to my chest -- and then backed away as they saw the monitor
scream.
Nick
--
Nick Theodorakis
nicholas_t...@urmc.rochester.edu
http://www.stjohnsroch.org/
malignus
>>>>A collegue of mine once had a thyroid check. Afterwards he went back to
>>>>work, and of course wore his lab coat, including dosimeter badge. When
nice story:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/06/1838249
regards., Lucjan
--
"When in doubt, use brute force" Ken T.
Michael Witty
> a lot more than almost anything other potential danger you can
> subject yourself to :-)
. . . nice chat up line! Mike.