I agree with John, this sounds like safety officialdom gone crazy.

Besides, a knife will cause a cut or a stab, not a "needlestick". Where is 
the danger? The greatest risk would probably be bacterial infection - same 
as if you cut yourself in the kitchen or workshop, and other blood borne 
pathogens would be minimised if each person had their own scraper. I would 
be more concerned over a repetitive strain type injury. I recall cramped 
hands and fingers vividly!

We used to use a thing called - if I remember - a cartilage knife - a sort 
of heavy duty solid stainless steel scalpel ordered from the surgical 
catalogues. They were sharp to start off with, but not to the degree of a 
disposable blade, and soon dulled from the constant scraping on the plastic 
cassette. We loved them, they were also useful for cutting sutures out of 
embedded tissue and digging little foci of calcification out (probably a 
practise that would be frowned on nowadays).

Let commonsense prevail!!


Louise Renton
Bone Research Unit
MRC
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel & fax +27 11 717 2298
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana"


I

----Original Message Follows----
From: "John Auld" 
To: "HistoNet Server" 
Subject: Re: Trimming around edge of cassettes
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 08:48:45 +0100


Ian

I was going say that Shandon had a new toy for this, although at c#163#500 I
think its a pricey toy (tightfisted Scot). But others have beat me to it.

As an aside there may be a risk of needle stick type injury (cut) from
microtomy, does anyone know of a method for cutting sections that will
eliminate this risk. Please don't take offence, I guesss this came from a
H&S type person. It's just that knives and other sharp objects are used in
Histo and have been safely for many tasks over many years. I have known
people to get cut when sectioning, coverslipping and other tasks but in
over 30 years (oh my god) never have I seen or heard of someone getting cut
when trimming cassettes.

Getting old and more cynical

John

Date: 5 Aug 2003 10:39:21 -0500
From: "ian clarke" 
Subject: Re trimming round edge of cassette

CAH

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