How does everyone dispose of pipette tips in a clean hood? - (Jan/29/2008 )

My lab frequently runs real-time PCR reactions and we've encountered contamination problems recently. During our investigation we decided to look into another method of disposing pipette tips while working within our clean hood. Our only options currently are to keep a sharp waste/bio container within the hood (but we use these containers for biohazard disposal as well, so we would prefer to keep them outside of the hood) or to keep the waste container outside of the hood near the worksite, but that requires reaching the pipette outside of the clean hood and into the lab atmosphere frequently.

I am curious as to what others are doing to dispose of pipette tips while working in the hood, especially when you're trying to maintain the sterilization of the hood environment.

Thanks!

When doing cell culture in the hood, I don't take my pipet outside the hood. I use the other hand to remove the tips (or eject the tips) and put them in a temp place in the hood.

Ditto. We place a small beaker in the hood at the start of the work, eject tips into it, so it's simple to remove them at the end of the work.

Yep we do it the same as swanny and pcrman. I usually keep the plastic containers that chemicals come in once they are empty, clean and sterilise them and then use those for disposal of tips.

We do as D House does. We keep a biohazard sharp-tainer under the hood and throw any used Pasteur pipette/tips/syringe. We never had any fungus/bacteria/mycoplasma contaminations.

Thank you all. I also found a hangable container that may be useful to some.

we use a bio-hazard bag and holder inside our cell culture hood. We remove it after anyone uses it and get a new bag.