EtBr safety procedures

[Michael Holloway]

In article <123285 at bu.edu> pfoster at bu.edu (Patricia Foster) writes:

>So why aren't the rest of you out there
>subject to the same regulations?

Because the regulations are promulgated by state law, are often arbitrary and 
made by political hacks, bureaucrats and hysterical special interests.  Who 
do we have to blame for this?  Us, that's who.  And not just through 
neglect of safety regulations but also through neglect of public relations.
At this university our biggest worry isn't disposal of EtBr but that someone
will throw out an empty box with the word "radioactive" on it.  If research
centers took adequate time to consider containment and disposal regulations
that both made sense and which were designed to address the legitmate fears
of the neighbors you would see greater compliance from the workers themselves 
and a more uniform set of regulations between centers.

I'm only bothering to go on about this as though I had all the answers 
because I'm often struck by the almost universal surprise when one person
moves from one institution to another and discovers that the regs are 
different!  People really do seem to believe that the set they are using at
the moment make perfect sense and should be intuitively obvious.