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Dirtiest Jobs in Science
ExE122 writes "CNN and CareerBuilder have posted a listing of the top 10 dirtiest jobs in science. 'Whether they are sifting through reeking mud banks to find cures for contamination, or sorting stool samples to get to the bottom of our bathroom dilemmas, these are some of the science jobs that sacrifice their time, energy and comfort for the greater global good.' Sounds like a job opportunity for Mike Rowe!" From the article: "Hot-zone Superintendent - What they do: Perform maintenance work for bio-safety labs that study lethal airborne pathogens, for which there is no known cure. Their work enables scientists to study the nature of disease-causing organisms, such as anthrax."
I don't know if being a Corpse-Flower Grower is exactly as bad as a Semen Washer or Orangutan-Pee Collector. So the thing stinks and smells like dead flesh, wear a mask. Working in a diaper service washing area would smell just as bad, but those people don't get an article.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It doesn't equate technicians with scientists. It just says that they are "jobs in science", i.e., a job whose effort is directed to a scientific end. The point is, these are things that need to be done to gain scientific knowledge.
--NitpickDupe
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
http://www.deathsacre.com/
I'm thinking the IT profession has a dirty job.
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I did grad school in a place where there was not an enormous amount of money to go around, so computers would generally get passed from graduating students to new students.
One of the grossest experiences of my grad school career was to take posession of one of these "hand-me-down" computers. You cannot imagine the grunge that came out of the keyboard. Crumbs, hairs, dandruff, even fucking fingernail clippings! Not to mention that gross skin-oil film on all the keys. euuuuwwwwwhhh
You see things like that, and naturally you start wondering about the things you can't see. I didn't even want to touch the mouse. And this computer was owned by a MS student, who had been there for less than two years. The computer was new when he got it.
The first thing I did was to run down to the local hole-in-the-wall computer joint and buy the cheapest keyboard I could find. The old one went into a corner and was never seen or heard from again (maybe it crawled away on its own, who knows).
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Working in a diaper service washing area
Surely nobody in developed countries washes diapers anymore? Disposable ones cost a small fraction of the cost of having a non-disposable one washed. When did you last see non-disposable diapers for sale in a store? 25 years ago, maybe?
Depends where you are. I'm an engineer and an epidemiologist. I work in and around IDP/refugee camps in developing countries and conflict areas. I do a lot of things, but I'm usually a water and sanitation guy, either building the system, investigating an outbreak or once I've figured it out, trying to stop it and stop it from happening again.
Having a tech do it is great, but when you're the only guy around who remotely knows what he's doing, you're down in that pit latrine yourself.
Whether I'm wearing my engineer's hat or my epidemiologist hat, it's likely to get a bunch of people poo on it.
George Bush science advisor? Science consultant for Fox News? Science teacher for Kansas?
In our chemistry department, we had a lot of controls on exposure to chemicals: hoods, materials handling procedures, that kind of stuff. The prof who did tin chemistry, and almost all his grad students, had gray hair: a sign of tin poisoning.
I worked in the microbiology department, in a pathogen lab, doing research on mycobacteria, specifically tuberculosis. Every semester we had to get tested for antibodies to TB (indicating that we'd been exposed) and every semester at least one researcher had.
My best friend works as a clinical technician in a lab doing human tissue sample analysis. Pathology lab, basically. About a week ago they had a patient that was *really* sick with a bunch of nasty things, and they were working through samples, and one of my friend's coworkers started screaming because one of the stool samples *moved*. The patient had serious tapeworms, among other problems.
We're thinking about going back to school and becoming art critics.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
When I worked for a hydrographic company as a young physics student many years ago, one of my assignments was to run a series of sonar scans of the sewage outfall lagoon of a large city on Lake Ontario. I did the runs in a small inflatable Zodiac with an outboard motor. Fortunately I was given a survival suit, although if I'd fallen into that water, I would've preferred to die right away. Besides the usual turds and toilet paper floating around, there were the occasional rotting animal corpses and some of the maintenance workers said they often cleaned aborted fetuses out of the filtration screens. On the shores of the lagoon were washed up tens of thousands of plastic tampon inserters, all in pastel pinks and blues. the maintenance workers called them "beach whistles". Absolutely nothing grew near the lagoon, and one day we noticed that thousands of sea gulls--those hardy beasts!--had died after they poked around the dirt turned over by a bulldozer. Scary stuff.
Anyway, after a few survey runs the outboard motor stalled right when I was in the middle of a large section of open water. I hoisted the prop out of the water and saw that it was completely wound up in dozens of used condoms that had got past the filtration screens. I had to free the prop using my Swiss Army knife. (I later threw away the knife.)
The scariest thing was what I noticed the next morning. The day before, I'd dripped some of the lagoon water on the jeans that I was wearing under my survival suit. Overnight, the liquid had actually burned holes right through the fabric of my jeans, as if mice had gnawed them. I was totally freaked by that and since then I've always wondered what effect the noxious chemicals I probably absorbed that day will have on my long-term health.