Ineffective occupational protection: laboratory personnel died of "mad cow disease"

The "curse" seven years ago

In a prion laboratory, operators are very skillfully processing a frozen section of the brain of a genetically modified mouse

Like surgery, the handling of biological samples may involve occupational exposure, that is, occupational exposure to risky samples

Unfortunately, this prion laboratory in France did not provide metal cut-resistant gloves as it should

Although the operator’s finger bleeds, he did not immediately perform effective treatment.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the incubation period of this disease is so long

The official website of the New England Journal of Medicine published a report on the incident on July 2, 2020, with the title "Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease diagnosed after 7.

In this incident, we can see how urgent it is to buy a metal cut-resistant glove when handling such high-risk samples

Some risk sources are often contacted by front-line testers

And some risk sources are even designed by the enterprise unintentionally

The picture on the left is a very common way of designing the inner cover, but I am increasingly suspicious that no one of these companies has ever experimented

The picture on the right is a lot more user-friendly, at least you can slowly apply force instead of lifting it all at once

These artificially designed risks are also common occupational exposure points

Therefore, occupational exposure protection is not only a matter for front-line operators and units, some upstream reagent companies and equipment companies also have the responsibility to do it

Another point is to strengthen occupational exposure education.