LMCB Light

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Microscopy Local Rules

All microscope users must receive introductory training before being able to book microscopes. Introductory training on a microscope will consist of an initial session covering the overall operation of the machine to be followed by a further session with the user's own specimen. Please see the LMCB Light Microscopy Training Policy for more information.
The LMCB Code of Practice for Laboratory Workers and the LMCB Health and Safety Policy apply to all microscope rooms. Remember that these rooms are laboratories and should be treated as such.
Each microscope room has a folder

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containing a copy of this document together with the Departmental Local Rules for Laser Safety, a laboratory eye-wear risk assessment form and a COSHH/risk assessment for common microscope procedures. In the back of the folder is a sheet that all microscope users must sign during the training procedure to indicate they have read and understood the safety rules.
If you want to carry out a procedure that is not covered by the standard risk assessment (e.g. one involving higher risks) then you must discuss this with the light microscopy facility manager well in advance and prepare a separate risk assessment for that work.

General safety rules

In addition to those in the Code of Practice the following rules apply to microscope rooms:

• Eating and drinking is not allowed in microscope rooms
• Lab coats and gloves must be worn when working with viable biological material in the microscope rooms
• Slides, coverslips, tips and other sharps must be taken away or disposed of in the sharps bins provided. Do not leave specimens behind on benches or other surfaces. Specimens left behind in the microscope room will be disposed of without notice.
• Gloves, tissues and other clinical waste must be disposed of in the yellow bins. DO NOT use the yellow bins for viable biological waste, liquids, food waste, slides and other sharps.
• All biological waste (e.g. viable cells in dishes or plates, living tissue mounted on slides) must be taken out of the microscope rooms, decontaminated and disposed of as biological waste in autoclave bags or sharps bins.
• Any spills of biological material must be cleaned up and decontaminated immediately. Aqueous medium must be mopped up with towels and decontaminated using 70% ethanol.
• Spills of aqueous medium directly onto microscope optics or components must be reported to the light microscopy facility immediately. Do not attempt to clean microscope optics yourself unless you have been trained to do so.
• Any coverslips and slides broken on the microscope must be removed and disposed of in the sharps bin. All small pieces of glass must be removed during the clean-up so there is no risk of injury to other users.

Mercury lamp safety rules

Some of the older microscopes in the LMCB have mercury vapour lamps. These will often be attached directly to the back of microscopes (i.e. they will not have liquid light guides). They are sometimes labelled HBO50 or HBO100. These mercury vapour lamps have a warm-up and cool-down time to prevent damage to the bulb.

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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 below.

Microscope usage – booking and saving data

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

Dirt and excess oil on microscope optics causes optical aberrations that seriously reduce the quality of images. Oil transferred to the microscope focus knob, computer keyboards and mice and other surfaces is unpleasant, can be a hazard and can cause imaging problems (e.g. dried up oil can stop specimens from fitting into stage adapters correctly). It is therefore very important that the microscopes are kept clean for their correct operation and to achieve the highest quality imaging.

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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 and will be returned if you see the light microscopy manager.

Links

Training - https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/LMCBLMic/LMCB+Light+Microscope+Training
Booking - https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/LMCBLMic/LMCB+Light+Microscope+Booking
Data - https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/LMCBLMic/LMCB+Light+Microscope+Data+Policy
LMCB Health & Safety - https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=40735703

Contacts

• Contact email for arranging training, reporting problems or requesting help with image acquisition or processing:

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• lmcb-lm-help@ucl.ac.uk
• Departmental Safety Officer's email to report any accidents or incidents:

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• p.topham@ucl.ac.uk
• Members-only mailing list for communicating with other microscope users and sharing information about protocols and procedures:

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• lmcb-lm-users@ucl.ac.uk