Possible ethidium bromide contamination - (Nov/16/2006 )

I am an udergrad student and I work as a Lab Tech on campus. I run a lot of PCR and use ethidium bromide quite a bit in lab. A few days after running PCR last week, I noticed that there was a small pink dot on my shoe.... it was raining outside the day that I wore those shoes in the lab... I was worried that this was a speck of ethidium bromide ... would ethidium bromide fade to pink if my suede shoes were damp or would it stay bright red... I am really concerned because I know the spot on my shoe would have touched all of the blue jeans that I was wearing and I washed those jeans with a lot of my other clothing.... should I be concerned and throw away my shoes? and should I worry about all of my clothes? or would the EtBr have stayed a deap red on my shoe rain or no rain?

maybe was just mustard, dont be very paranoic, you surely would have notice if a drop like that of
EB felt down to your shoe

I wouldn't be worried about that small dot. You could see the dot on UV light- if it doesn't shines, it isn't BrEt. Even if so, it's a quite small quantity and doesn't offer a lot of danger. I don't want panic, but many times there are BrEt contamination in lab (pippettes, worktables in the better of cases), we don't realize, so we work normally. Just be carefull and take stardard safety rules (i.e. coat, gloves, etc). So, don't throw away your shoes, a good wash will be enough.
Regards.

Its true, its necessary to take precautions when working with EBV or any other mutagen, specially if contamination is difficult to detect, It might not be as simple as ale says, EB wont glow with UV unless is bound to DNA. There are no simple tests to detect its contamination,, (i took it from the 1000 posters my technicians leave in the door hahahah)
regards