The Hazards of Lab Work

Harvard Medical School is beefing up lab security after six researchers got sick off poisoned coffee back in August. The toxicology reports came in recently, according to Bloomberg, and the chemical culprit was sodium azide, which turns into a toxic gas when it's mixed into water. The good news is that none of the six died. The bad news: Nobody seems to know how this stuff got into the communal coffee pot to begin with.

And while a whodunnit poisoning mystery is not exactly what Wired had in mind when it listed "Grad Student" as #6 on its top 10 list of Best, Most Dangerous Science Jobs, this incident certainly does nothing to bump that job off the list. Not to mention the fact that, given the lab environment, you have to wonder whether the poisoning was even intentional at all...or whether somebody simply didn't wash their hands well enough before making a fresh pot.

From Wired:

Grad student

Even the most mundane job in science is hazardous if you don't know what you're doing. Grad students in labs around the world are in constant danger of, well, screwing up. In 2004, a Texas A&M student, for example, was cleaning up a laboratory when a jar of chemicals he was handling suddenly exploded, leaving him with severe lacerations and burns.

• [danielcolascione]

  @32: Do you mean dimethylmercury? A drop of that stuff will kill you, even through latex gloves.

• [uricacid]

  in our lab, sodium azide is used in minute quantities to keep solutions for immunohistochemistry free of bacterial growth or other nasties. no one touches it without gloves. generally, institutional laboratory rules dictate that a coffee machine would be in a separate designated area, away from chemicals and benchwork, so it’s just unlikely that someone would come make some coffee still wearing gloves. In addition, if this was one of those single-serving cup machines (like a keurig or whatever) it’s hard to imagine a source of multiple contaminations other than the water tank, as another commenter already pointed out. All in all it’s hard to imagine this being accidental. Unless some major, major idiot was admitted to this lab. And honestly, from what I’ve seen of ivy league institutions, that wouldn’t be that surprising… heh had to get that cheap shot in there.

• [Anonymous]

  I had an organic chem prof who had been working with this stuff and managed to poison himself.

  A few grains got trapped under his fingernail and tainted his sandwich. That was all it took. That stuff is incredibly toxic. He was all right in the long run though.

• [VagabondAstronomer]

  One word – Brundelfly.

• [Osprey101]

  Back when I was an explosives chemist, some guys I worked with who used to be in the automotive industry making airbags (which use sodium azide as the gas generator) told me that some particularly “funny” guys would dust the inside of the respirator with sodium azide- just a touch, so the mark would be treated to coughing spells, etc. upon inhalation.

  Funny guys.

• [Anonymous]

  Argh! ALL of the experts have weighed in that it is NOT an accidental poisoning? What is it with all of these weird speculations that sodium azide somehow accidentally got in the coffee pot? People! Sodium azide is one of the most dangerous chemicals in the laboratory. It doesn’t accidentally get anywhere! This is exactly like finding rat poison in the coffee pot. No one wonders if somebody forgot to wash their hands after playing in rat poison! Sodium azide is *more deadly* than rat poison. A *tiny* bit of research before you write a blog post would be so nice, like maybe checking out more than one source to see whether someone has already shot down your uninformed theory?

• [Anonymous]

  Hi,
  As an organic chemist with over 10 years industry experience. I can tell you guys, this was attempted
  MURDER.
  I’ve handled NaN3 plenty of times. Azide is a very good functional group to convert and is very useful synthetically. I always used proper precautions, like wearing thick rubber gloves and working in fume hood. The disposal of any aqueous waste streams from synthetic chemistry “Work-Up” are highly toxic as well.

  Sounds like the work of some sociopathic nutjob. probably things aren’t going too well for them, so the perp is taking it out on the staff.

  This sort of thing has happen before in the UK at least.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Young
  There was even a movie about it.
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115033/

  I for one do not believe this was accidental, check out
  the Ld50, you would need a fairly large dose to be fatal.
  One tiny crystal of NaN3 or contaminated hands would not make six people sick.

• [Anonymous]

  Just because you’re in grad school (or med school) doesn’t mean you’re..ahem…Al That Smart. Most lab accidents I saw when in grad school were the result of carelessness. The person who had their hair singed off because they poured acetone on a solid sodium extractor left in a sink that wasn’t properly cleaned. The person who caused a fire in a garbage can because they threw something wet on top of something that shouldn’t have been in the can in the first place. Heating a closed system, resulting in flying shards of glass.

  As for the poisoning, I agree with #13 above; unless someone had a major grudge, someone probably did something stupid like keep their gloves on when they filled the coffee pot. Hey, I’ve seen worse, unfortunately.

• [Snig]

  Similar story every few years, not urban legends.
  Well there may be urban legends too, but I know it happens Happened to a person I knew, while she was in the neighboring lab, I remember her sobbing from it. As far as we can determine, someone dabbed her radioactive badge with an isotope. It was the only thing that was hot, the rest of the lab was cold. There was an obvious suspect, but no other evidence.

  This was another case.
  http://www.now.org/nnt/01-96/nih.html

  There’s a tremendous number of wonderful folks in science, just the rare evil pinhead who makes the police reports.

• [NickP]

  you have to wonder whether the poisoning was even intentional at all…or whether somebody simply didn’t wash their hands well enough before making a fresh pot.

  I am certain it was intentional. In Biology/biochemistry labs, sodium azide is used in very small quantities prevent bacterial growth in things like antibody stocks. We’re talking microliter quantities of 0.02% solutions. There’s virtually no chance that a large enough quantity to poison an entire pot of coffee would be spilled, picked up on bare hands, and then deposited in a coffee pot.

• [Anonymous]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_azide

  NaN3, which is very soluble in water, is typically used as a biocide in laboratory solutions. Hence, the nasty human interaction upon consumption, not from toxic gas.

• [Lab Monkey]

  I know we should be drinking Fair Trade Coffee, but this could be taking protest a bit far.

• [Anonymous]

  A similar event happened some years ago on Stockholm University (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=194335&sectioncode=26). That time it was a disgruntled (and mentally unstable) student.
  I’ve worked long enough in the scientific world to have heard about equipment sabotage and murder attempts and to be able to say this doesn’t surprise me… There’s always going to be nutcases working within sensitive areas. They’ll find out it was an inside job.

• [Anonymous]

  what was a coffee machine doing in/near a science lab anyways? nothing that has been anywhere near a science lab should be eaten or drank.

• [holtt]

  Great wired article, but I think they should have put oceanographers on the list too. Nothing like being out on deck at 3 AM and having a huge wave come at you while a 900 lb sensor package is swinging around in the air and the big metal doors come loose and are swinging around as well. Gotta grab that railing, but you don’t want to grab where the 900 lb thing is gonna hit. I got a ton of water in my boots, and the only way it could get in the foul weather gear was through the opening at my neck…

• [wackyvorlon]

  You shouldn’t have sodium azide on your hands at all, in a normal lab they’d be wearing gloves while handling it. These issues inevitably trace back either to malicious acts, or to lax application of safety procedures.

• [Matthew Miller]

  Also worth noting: this wasn’t a coffee _pot_. It was a single-serve coffee machine. That means it’s not like one pot was brewed and that pot poisoned. I suppose putting it into the water reservoir would accomplish the same thing, but it seems even less likely to be accidental.

• [madprime]

  I’m a grad student in the Genetics Dept on the 2nd floor of this building (the incident occurred on the 8th floor, which is Pathology). Of course it wasn’t accidental, everybody wears lab gloves all the time in lab, both for our own protection *and* to protect our experiments from being contaminated by *us* (from DNA or bacteria on our skin).

  Anyway, there’s something you’ve missed about this story that’s really bothered me. This incident occurred two months ago. I didn’t hear about it until last Friday, when they sent out an email to all people at Harvard Medical School. If they cared about our safety don’t you think they’d tell us about this a little sooner? Even if they weren’t sure, don’t you think we might want to reconsider using public food storage & coffee machines?

  Instead, they do nothing until it hits the media. Then they institute security measures that don’t actually make us more secure: the 2nd and 3rd floors have side door swipe-card access. They’ve blocked those and now make us go by the security desk, where flashing anything that looks like an ID is accepted. That’s not really stopping outsiders from getting in, and it’s almost certainly an “inside job”! Don’t you think it would’ve been more important not to wait two months to tell us about this?!

  I saw some posters protesting the new security in the department on Monday, but they were promptly taken down.

  • [Snig]

    In my youth I was a grad student at a medical school, and I feel for you. We felt very much that we were generally considered about equal status with the lab animals, except there was an oversight committee to make sure the animals were treated humanely, and we had no such advocates. When the Hep B vaccine came out, they recommended it to all personnel, as there was a theory that some of the labs were working with materials that may have carried it. Long presentation on the neccessity of getting the shot. All staff had it paid for by their health care, except of course grad students had to cough up a big chunk of change if we wanted it. A contractor also turned the hoods off on us one weekend, assuming that no sane person would be working in labs on a weekend.

• [jsw441]

  Two types of thinking that make lab work most dangerous are expressed in the posts above: First- “Even the most mundane job in science is hazardous if you don’t know what you’re doing.” and Second- “[not everyone who works in a lab is as smart as you think]. So does that mean that if you think you know what you’re doing, or you (and an admissions committee) think you’re smart, then lab work is less dangerous for you?? *No*!! It’s exactly this arrogance that leads to a blasé attitude toward lab work and chemicals, and most every researcher goes through a phase like this at some point (myself included), and it leads to accidents or near-misses. Be respectful of the materials and equipment you’re handling, and ask the proper way to do something new- even if you think you know what you’re doing. Be safe!

• [sally599]

  Agree with everyone above—not an accident or a joke—we have to house this chemical in a special area that’s posted with all sorts of fun skull icons, you would not touch it without gloves, unless of course you are an organic chemist—I heard about this guy who was smoking a cigarette after pouring flammable waste in the sink he tossed in the butt. Never did that again…

• [Jinglefritz]

  I am almost certain this was done on purpose. One of the ways they look for poisons is with HPLC and there is normally Sodium azide in the carrying buffers to keep things from growing in them. There is a (probably apocryphal) story that most people who worked in labs in the 80′s would be familiar with. Poisoning someone with azide was believed to be a sure fire way to get away with killing someone.
  Dose them with azide and when they shot body fluid through the HPLC Column, the azide peak from the sample would just look like the normal azide background peak from the preservative in the carrying buffer. Nobody would be the wiser because the sample would appear to be clean. Of course, Forensic chemists know better, now (if it were even true in the first place) and especially given the symptoms would know what to look for using other tests like using freshly prepared buffer without azide and looking for a peak. This is just something we used to talk about in grad school, and I haven’t been anywhere near Harvard lately.

• [mdh]

  They were doing animal research on a college campus. Seems like there should be a few likely candidates.

  • [madprime]

    > They were doing animal research on a college campus.
    > Seems like there should be a few likely candidates.

    (A) Harvard Medical School is not on a college campus, it’s 30 minutes away on the other side of the river, twice as far from Harvard’s campus as MIT is. It’s a “medical area”, there’s several hospitals within blocks and the whole area is chockfull of medical/biological research labs.

    (B) Why target Pathology? Why not Genetics? Actually, my choice would be a lab that does behavioral research in monkeys. The lab affected hasn’t been singled out for accusations of deplorable animal research.

    (C) Access to the lab chemical indicates the person who did it also worked in a lab (possibly the same lab).

    As someone who sympathizes with the animal rights movement I’m irritated by your gratuitous slander of the cause.

    • [Snig]

      I actually don’t sympathize at all with the animal rights movement, but suspect it’s more likely to be a coworker/rival or “loved one” or ex-”loved one” of one of the targets or the intended targets. Partly the “It’s always the spouse” principle, but also just that the elaborate political conspiracy theory seems to be just less likely. One report did mention they worked on mice, but don’t know why an obscure lab on the eighth floor of no notoriety would be singled out. For that matter, I never know why a lab is singled out vs. a McDonald’s or a seafood restaurant or a grocery store or a pest control service for that matter. In sheer volume a restaurant or grocery store goes through way more critters in a week than the average lab does in a year.

• [Milarepa]

  A graduate student at my friend’s university was admitted to the hospital with multiple organ failure and nobody knew why. She died shortly after.
  When looking at her lab notebooks they found out that she accidentally poisoned herself with methyl-mercury the year before. A trace of a drop on your sking and AFTER ABOUT A YEAR your organs fail. She knew all the time…

• [Anonymous]

  While I’m not dismissing the concept of foul play (and not making the accusation, either – take note libel lawyers!), there’s still scope for just sheer stupidity to be the cause.

  I’ve worked in a couple of research labs over the years, and the number one rule with regards to safety is to never, ever, underestimate the capacity of other people – usually normal, sometimes quite intelligent people – to do stupid things.

  Example; I once found a girl (about halfway through her postgrad degree) crying next to a fumehood in the lab. What was wrong? She’d tried sonicating her favourite necklace to clean it; when that hadn’t worked, she’d tried the aqua regia bath.

  It’s entirely possible that someone took a batch of de-ionised water and prepped it for use as a stock solution; autoclave, add azide, filter, etc and then just labelled it “water”. Then some bright spark thinks “hey, maybe the ultrapure water in the lab makes coffee taste better – I should try that” and BINGO, instant poisoning.

  • [Roast Beef]

    Example; I once found a girl (about halfway through her postgrad degree) crying next to a fumehood in the lab. What was wrong? She’d tried sonicating her favourite necklace to clean it; when that hadn’t worked, she’d tried the aqua regia bath.

    Wow, that girl must have been wicked smart to be halfway through her postgrad degree before she’d reached the age of adulthood.

    This is something of a threadjack, but I think it’s important (enough to come out of my semi-lurkerhood for). The “men and girls” trope is just so retrograde, like something out of “Mad Men”. I won’t bore you by going on about how women are seriously underrepresented in science and how it’s partly due to a culture that devalues and infantalizes women. I will simply say: “girls” who are old enough to be working on their postgrad are more properly termed “women”. Even if they’ve just done something as shortsighted as dissolving their favorite necklace in aqua regia. /threadjack

    • [Jerril]

      I will simply say: “girls” who are old enough to be working on their postgrad are more properly termed “women”.

      It’s not “men and girls” in my experience, but “guys and girls/gals” – this may be a dialectical difference, but girl/gal is the informal term used by an older man or woman when discussing a woman decades younger than the speaker, the same way “guy” is used.

      It’s also appropriate when used by a woman of about the same age, the same way a man might say “going out with the guys”.

  • [Snig]

    Great historical note on “the solution” to how to hide a Nobel medal from nazis.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franck

• [Soon Lee]

  Anonymous#1:
  Are you kidding? Handling sodium azide with bare hands?! And then not washing hands before eating?! An organic prof should know better.

  As for the Harvard poisoning incident, it seems unlikely to be accidental: this is not a chemical to be handled without protective gear. I don’t find the “not washing hands” theory plausible.

• [Camp Freddie]

  Toxic gas? Sodium azide is toxic, full stop.

  Mixed with water it just dissociates like any other salt. Technically, it will form an equilibrium with sodium hydroxide and hydrazoic acid in the mix, and hydrazoic acid is volatile and toxic. However, gas would be a negligible hazard compared to actual ingestion of the azide.
  If anything the gas would make it safer since anyone savouring the aroma would get some milder warning symptoms (various breathing problems) that the coffee is poisoned.

  Accidental exposure seems unlikely, but grad student do some crazy things. If some retard didn’t take his gloves off before re-filling the water reservoir in the machine, it could be possible. It would be (literally?) a criminal level of negligence though.

  Also, this won’t be a joke. This is serious high toxic stuff. It’s not like sticking phenolphthalein indicator liquid in someone’s drink to make them crap themselves (someone did this at school as revenge on a bully, not sure if I approve but it was very funny).

• [PaulR]

  Here’s a beaut: “Even on the ground, they’re not safe — Hurricane Katrina destroyed the squad’s home base.” But did anyone get injured? Killed?

  What about the building next door? Was it left untouched? Would the jobs (oh, I don’t know) the rubber-band factory next door also qualify as a dangerous job because their factory was destroyed by a weather phenomenon?

  Is it only me or is anyone else annoyed at the fact that the Wired article/list, which deals with a science topic, only lists anecdotal ‘evidence’?

  Where are the stats? What is/are the rates of death or serious injury so we can compare the rates against really dangerous jobs, like shrimp fishermen, construction workers, or people who drive for a living…

  Yeesh!

• [Anonymous]

  Why isn’t “brewer” on this list? Handling heavy sacks of malt, working with water at scalding temperatures, at risk of dying from CO2 poisoning, working with caustic chemicals, etc. etc. I think you’ll find more brewers have been killed or injured on the job than “hurricane hunters”.