What type of work is done in a clean lab?

Anything that can trigger a contaminant to become airborne or alter the data capture of an experiment.

-cb

I think you're talking about a BSL-4 lab. That's Biological Safety Level, and 4 is the maximum. Knowing that should help with your Googling to learn the specifics.

Otherwise, "clean lab" might refer to places where dust would be a major problem, such as where computer somethings are made--not my field, I'm afraid.

I worked in a 'clean room' environment years back for a major silicon chip manufacturer where they made their new range of chips. Similar environments would be used for a lot of sensitive electronic manufacture e.g. building satellites as mentioned above.

Are you looking at the kinds of labs where scientists work with pathogenic microbes and are suited up to protect themselves from dangerous diseases (and have protections in place to keep such from escaping the lab environment), or are you thinking of microbiology labs where scientists practice aseptic technique to protect their specimens from environmental contamination that could compromise their research or diagnostics?

I've worked in a veterinary virology lab with animal specimens that could potentially be pathogenic to us if handled incorrectly, but it wasn't a full containment facility. We did have to wear gloves, lab coats, and masks, and we processed specimens for testing inside laminar flow hoods. When we walked out on the necropsy floor (where the dead animals were dissected and examined by veterinary pathologists, and specimens were obtained from the carcasses), we had to use foot coverings and walk through antiseptics before returning to work. And we all had to have rabies vaccines. But we weren't working with anthrax suspects or anything like that.

There are different levels of containment and protection that are required, depending on the nature of the research and of the microbes used and their degree of virulence. Does the CDC have any information on their site?

If the lab users are wearing full body suits with air supply then I can only think they are handling top level pathogens like Ebola

sk3erkrou said:

What kind of work would be done in those types of labs?

Click to expand...

Anything that has to be kept clean.

Seriously. Though having portable air supplies means serious biological danger to the lab workers. As in working with deadly contaminants, diseases and genetic mutations. Potentially chemical labs, depending on what they're working with. These suits with an air supply are solely to protect lab workers, so anything that can cause serious, immediate and irreparable harm to a worker.

Standard clean rooms are used for a lot of electronic and medical assembly, where the smallest particle will interfere with the function of what's being assembled. Air filters, but no self contained supply and less protective suits. The goal here is protecting the work, not the workers.

Jeff

TellMeAStory said:

I think you're talking about a BSL-4 lab. That's Biological Safety Level, and 4 is the maximum. Knowing that should help with your Googling to learn the specifics.

Otherwise, "clean lab" might refer to places where dust would be a major problem, such as where computer somethings are made--not my field, I'm afraid.

Click to expand...

I once had a job in a clean room in a computer factory. The clean room was for repairing hard drives, where one tiny dust particle could crash the entire drive (hard crash, i.e. where the head that reads the disc literally crashes into the disc, causing physical damage to the disc). All the components got cleaned, put back together, anything that was damaged or not working right was replaced then the drive was tested before being allowed out of the clean room. Everyone had to wear a suit that covered the entire body and follow a procedure for changing into the suit and everything in the clean room was cleaned before being allowed in, in this room that we called the semi clean room. The clean room was 1000 times cleaner than an operating theatre becuase in an operating theatre you just need to kill pathogens on anything that's going to come in contact with the patient. You don't need to eradicate every single particle of dust from the entire room. Surgeons don't need to have their entire body covered.

Top level biology labs as described in the quoted post above would be for containing dangerous microorganisms like Ebola or smallpox. The suits etc they wear and other safety measures are to protect the people working in there and prevent the microorganisms from getting anywhere they're not supposed to be (which would lead to them potentially spreading and infecting people). In a clean room, the suits are to protect very sensitive equipment from being damaged, i.e. they keep all your dust, dead skin cells, water droplets in your breath, etc, inside the suit to stop them getting on the equipment.

Checking blood, and stool samples from farmers so we don't import pathogen, disease, plague into the food chain: meat, burgers, wings. Quite boring job, possibly, I think so, maybe.