Musings on my neverending quest for sugar

Chemical spill! w00t!

I was finishing up a lab in the bio building on Wednesday at around 4 when the fire alarm went off. Now, for all of you non-science majors, we scientists are possibly the most reluctant people to evacuate a building. ("No-wait-I-need-to-finish-setting-up-this-gel-and-put-it-in-the-fridge-AAAAAAAAA!") So, naturally, all of us unwillingly filed out the door, but not before noticing the sulfur odor in the hallway. I found it quite familiar, but couldn't place it until Sarah said that someone had dropped a bottle of 2-mercaptoethanol. Ohhh yes. I remembered - I had worked with it at Rutgers to strip off antibodies off proteins. I remember it smelled like no other, and how it would easily stink up an area if I didn't keep it covered or under the fume hood. And I had been using only 3 microliters of it at a time!

It was going to be fun airing out the entire building...

I was actually pretty impressed at the speedy reaction of our alarm. Within five minutes of evacuation, a fire truck, a paramedic, and police cars had arrived on the scene. Although, I was a bit dubious at how all this was playing out - it was only a bottle, and besides the fact that it STINKS and is flammable, it's rather innocuous.

Well, okay, the fumes are toxic but it's not like anyone would be breathing it in voluntarily. And it could also kill you if you get enough of it on yourself, but that's pretty much avoided because of the smell..

So, the building was shut down. Several people lost their experiments, but such is the life of a scientist. (At Rutgers we were being evacuated almost every other day because of faulty ventilation.) Apparently the entire block was shut down at some point during the night because of the odor. Wow. It's not like it would hurt anyone if it was that dilute, but apparently rumors were spreading around so I'll just dispel them now:

• It's NOT going to give you cancer
  
• It's NOT going to kill you on contact
  
• It won't eat through the tile.

Just the phrase "chemical spill" reminds people large vats of sulfuric acid exploding, haha. But it's still quite amazing how powerful 100 mL of a chemical can be - morning bio classes were cancelled today, and when I stopped over there a few hours ago, they were still airing out the building. We'll see what happens tomorrow...hopefully I'll be able to come in the morning and rescue some virgin drosophila before the males get to them. I failed them this morning. I'm sorry, virgins!

posted by sugarfiend @ 11:46 PM