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- Vacate the room immediately. There will be mercury vapour in the air and mercury is toxic
- Close the door and lock it if possible. Otherwise find some way to warn others not to enter
- Contact or send someone else to contact a member of the light microscopy facility. They will arrange for UCL Hazardous Waste Service to come in and decontaminate the room after the mercury has cooled down and condensed onto surfaces. Contact details for the light microscopy facility are at the end of this document.
Microscope usage – booking
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You must book microscopes for all the time you want to use them. The booking rules vary between microscopes. More details about booking microscopes can be found in the LMCB Light Microscopy Booking Policy.
In general you should save microscope data directly to the server because it is routinely backed up. Exceptions to this include time-lapse acquisitions where it might be safer to save data on a local disc before copying it later. More details about saving data can be found in the LMCB Light Microscopy Data Policy.
Keeping the microscopes clean
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- Always keep immersion oil bottles in the trays provided. Never put lens tissue or anything else in the trays as it will become contaminated with oil
- Always fully screw the top back onto the immersion oil to prevent big spills if the bottle is knocked over
- Always wear gloves when dispensing immersion oil and remove the gloves as soon as you have applied the oil. This is to stop oil being transferred to keyboards, mice, microscope focus knobs, etc.
- Do not use too much oil. One or two drops from the end of the dropper is almost always sufficient. Excess oil will run down objective lenses or onto the sub-stage condenser and will get inside both the lens and the nosepiece, ruining images.
- Wipe all the lenses you've used after imaging. Use lens tissue to remove oil with a single wipe in one direction. Do not rub back and forth with the tissue as this can scratch the lens. Do not re-use the same tissue but wipe again with another tissue. This stops oil and dirt being transferred. Always wipe up any oil that has run down around the edge of the objective lens to stop oil from getting into the nosepiece.
- Clean up spilled oil immediately by wiping up the excess with absorbent tissue and wiping non-optical components with 70% ethanolIMS
Any other items left in the microscope rooms (e.g. aspirator bottles, pens, notebooks, pipettes, tip boxes) will be removed. Anything that should not be in microscope rooms (e.g. coffee mugs) will be confiscated removed and will be returned if you see the light microscopy manager.
If you find excess oil, broken glass or other dirt on or around microscopes then please report it to the Light Microscopy Facility email: lmcb-lm-help@ucl.ac.uk
If you make a mess of the microscopes you will get rubbish images, so keep them clean!
Penalties
If a user does not comply with the safety rules (e.g. eats or drinks in the microscope rooms) or with the booking rules (e.g. does not turn up for a microscope session without giving notice); or if a user has left a microscope in an unclean state the following penalties will be levied:
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