How to get rid of Ethidium Bromide? - (Dec/10/2005 )
I once worked with a professor (he's the one who delineated the structure of hammerhead ribozyme.), though he didn't tell us not to worry about EtBr he himself often used bare fingers to pick up his EtBr gel 
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Here's a blog entry on EtBr safety I cam across a few years ago and her (Rosie Redfield) point of view makes sense. I kind of felt the EtBr scare may have been overblown by the practicing community, after all it's been almost 60 years since we practice molecular biology with over 100,000 person/year EtBr exposure and there is not a single reported/confirmed EtBr cancer case. Is there any other drug has this length of "clinical trial" and safety record? No. Are we simply wasting money on EtBr waste disposal and safety regulation? Likely.
. Here's a blog entry on EtBr safety I cam across a few years ago and her (Rosie Redfield) point of view makes sense. I kind of felt the EtBr scare may have been overblown by the practicing community, after all it's been almost 60 years since we practice molecular biology with over 100,000 person/year EtBr exposure and there is not a single reported/confirmed EtBr cancer case. Is there any other drug has this length of "clinical trial" and safety record? No. Are we simply wasting money on EtBr waste disposal and safety regulation? Likely.
I've read the blog.
the explanation according to the blog is based on "the dosage to kill something".
I think what people are afraid of EtBr is the possibility of causing any mutation/cancer in the FUTURE or later stage of their life.
The consequences might not be immediate.
Yup. you really need a HIGH DOSE to kill rats, mice or human.
We can also die if we are over dose of other non-toxic chemical.
But what about the side effect in the FUTURE? or, our NEXT GENERATION, maybe?
We do not want to take the risk.
Maybe sometimes we ARE too paranoid about the EtBr thingy, but it is better to be safe then sorry, right?
by the way, people who work in lab deal with all kinds of chemical - toxic, non-toxic, carcinogen, non-carcinogen....
If one day, he/she develops cancer, how can we identify which chemical causes the cancer - either caused by EtBr or DEPC, or is it just a coincidence?
This one is for our young epidemiology colleagues: would a retrospective cohort study comparing the cancer rate of molecular biologists who worked with EtBr to those who never did be a good thesis topic? It'd be great if we could get some hint on this controversy from such studies. Sixty years is a long time in talking about future. I bet you would not find a positive correlation, because empirically I don't see any of us die earlier or have more 3 toed offsprings. LOL...
Maybe sometimes we ARE too paranoid about the EtBr thingy, but it is better to be safe then sorry, right?
by the way, people who work in lab deal with all kinds of chemical - toxic, non-toxic, carcinogen, non-carcinogen....
If one day, he/she develops cancer, how can we identify which chemical causes the cancer - either caused by EtBr or DEPC, or is it just a coincidence?
By that logic, we need be much more concerned about DHMO, used many times daily by all labs.
chucha - using water to wash off from electrical equipment is not really a good idea.
I too can vouch for activated charcoal - it works well. You then have to wash the charcoal off and dispose of appropriately though. - The "tea" bags mentioned earlier are also activated charcoal and my old lab ran all the running buffer through a "tea" bag (one bag does about 2L of running buffer). My current lab uses sybr safe solely. expensive - but no contamination etc.
I once had a supervisor who spilled EtBr powder on his hands (no gloves) and said "oh well, I've already had kids". Apparently EtBr is more teratogenic than carcinogenic.