Progress is not always beneficial.
Back in my school days, in chemistry classes we used to pipette various liquids by mouth, and think nothing of it. Mouth-pipetting is great; if you're reasonably competent you just grab a pipette, suck, hold pressure with tip of tongue, blow when necessary. No extra equipment required. Of course, this must have been bad for us because school children in their thousands were dying from pipette-transmitted diseases and from ingesting benzine or whatever we happened to be playing with that week.
Yeah.
So, I went to university and found that the Health & Safety cretins officers had decreed that mouth-pipetting was far too dangerous (read, "people might sue us"), as witnessed by the carnage in our classrooms, and that we must use these beasties in our practical classes:
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These were great: The glass pipettes, when put into the appropriate hole, would easily break, thus enabling cack-handed students to shove jagged glass spears through the palms of their hands (which, unlike the pipette-transmitted diseases and drinking of benzine, I actually observed, first-hand as it were. Twice). Glass pipettes, of course, are far more environmentally-friendly (and cheaper) than the disposable plastic ones that do not break quite so readily, and universities spend too much on Administration (including Health and Safety. . .) to be able to afford a good supply of these fellas:
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I'm saying this because I spent fifteen minutes this morning wandering around the lab looking for one of those bloody things so that I could use a single rainforest-killing ozone-depleting global-warming non-student skewering plastic pipette. Eventually I found one of these
and was gratified that, after *mumble* years I still remembered how to use one, onehanded. Yay. Go me.
In the old days, I'd have just sucked up the 2xTY and spat it out. Progress, you see?
Oh, and while doing the Google thing to find some pictures with which to illustrate this rambling nonsense, I came across a girl band who call themselves the Pipettes. This tickles me.
(Image credit: foche)
I'm convinced that all this H&S nonsense is a plot by the Administration to destroy the practise of science in our generation and thus secure more funding for themselves, like some aggressive and implacable canker feeding off the lifeblood of all that is good and true and wholesome. See my next novel for details.
Comments
Thanks for the nostalgic chuckle. I still use mouth pressure to inject ink (and clean up extra PBS) when working in chicken embryos - no better control by any other device for that sort of volume (in the 10's to 100's of ul). Other devices are better for smaller volumes, and for bigger ones, we like to use device (b) above.
Our boss downstairs has started a collection of glass pipettes that he displays in a bouquet within the inner part of one of those barrel washing devices. He's sure they will be collectors' items someday - and can't bring himself to throw away something that used to be painfully collected and reused not so long ago as that. It's a shame for the landfills/ozone layer, as you say, that we can't bring ourselves to have two pipette qualities in lab, the way we do for gamma-irradiated plastic vs glass bottles, after all. But we can hardly find an employee to push the button on the automatic dishwasher, much less wash pipettes...
Posted by: Alethea | September 5, 2007 05:15 PM
Oh yeah, and the H&S thing is an *international* conspiracy - make sure you emphasize that in your market pitch to the publishers. Haven't you noticed that they are clonal and have identical and predictable reactions? Therein lies their downfall - we'll mount a suitable defense, never fear!
Posted by: Alethea | September 5, 2007 05:18 PM
Mouth pipetting was allowed at my school; however, its safety was debatable. I once found myself at the school tuck shop buying sherbet to neutralise the pthalic acid I had just ingested via a mouth pipette.
Posted by: Nige | September 5, 2007 10:00 PM
hehe, I come from a poor lab where we had (and still have) glass pipettes that are sterilised all the time...
Regarding the mouth pipetting, I did it all through my PhDtime but was told by other PhDstudents that I was insane... pah, in my new place the tech sent an email to the whole lab stating "please note that mouth pipetting is note allowed" which might have been the most give away email since I was the new one and the only one doing it... point taken so now I only do it alone at night when I am lazy ;)
However, even I see the good thing not mouth pipetting when in the sterile hood :)
Posted by: chall | September 6, 2007 03:13 AM
chall, too funny. You make it sound so forbidden having to "do it" alone at night. haha!
Well, here at my university I only got the chance to use the plastic pipettes and the automagic pipettor last year. Before that, I'd always used glass and those first two pump-action versions.
Posted by: Ricardo Vidal | September 7, 2007 09:14 AM
mouth pipetting- ewww gross!
Posted by: beta gal | September 11, 2007 01:06 PM
Just randomly - I thought you'd like to know that The Pipettes are actually coming to australia to perform for one of the big summer festivals!
Posted by: Sarah | September 27, 2007 02:46 PM