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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."
Cleaning up Stephen Hawking after "Chili Tuesday" has had time to work its magic!
I knew a girl in high school who wanted to work as a hot zone researcher; last I heard, she was applying to law schools. I'm not sure which profession involves more noxious material.
"I want you to study T'Pol in depth and at at length and have a report on my desk by next Tuesday. Hopefully, there will be some hot eruptions."
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Where does the dirty part come into play?"
That's how you have to talk to the guy during the step 0) obtaining of sample.
Where were you when the voynix came?
the dirty grunt work would be assigned to a technician. Or by grad students.
Which brings us to the real dirtiest job in science: being a grad student. It doesn't matter what crap jobs the scientists in the article have, it's still better than indentured servitude.
Ewww poor baby
Quit whinging. My first work experience was six months of grinding uranium ore. By hand. With a mortar and pestle. And the "protective gear" they gave us? A t-shirt and shorts. And I'm not kidding.
Everyone's gotta spend some time at the bottom of the heap.
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.
Hell, that's a highly anticipated Friday night activity for some of us.
... what?