Tissue culture hoods, in which researchers manipulate and work with cell cultures, must be kept clean to avoid fungal contamination of cells. Before and after using a tissue culture hood, spray the entire hood with ethanol. Spray your gloved hands with ethanol before you start working in a tissue culture hood. Spray anything you introduce into a tissue culture hood, such as petri dishes or media, with ethanol.
Incubators--the environments in which cell cultures are grown--absolutely must be cleaned periodically to avoid cell contamination. Remove the shelves of your incubator and scrub them with soap, then wash them in a washing machine with de-ionized water and dry them in a laboratory dryer. Wrap them in an autoclave bag and autoclave them for 35-45 minutes. When you replace them in the incubator, only handle them with gloves sprayed with ethanol. Replace the water at the bottom of the incubator with sterile 50 percent tap water and 50 percent de-ionized water, with methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate.
Regularly clean your lab benches, at which you do most of your work. Replace chemicals in their appropriate drawers, throw away trash such as pipette tips or old test tubes and wipe the surface of a bench with ethanol to remove chemical residue. Keep all glassware with which you work clean. Use a brush to clean glassware with soap and water and leave it on a drying rack. If necessary for your experiments, further wash glassware in a lab washing machine with deionized water and autoclave glassware afterward to further sterilize it.
Chemical hoods are the lab locales in which activity with toxic chemicals such as methylene chloride, which are dangerous to breathe, occurs. Chemical hoods are designed both to protect researchers from toxic fumes and to provide an area where toxic chemicals can be disposed. While all of this is well and good, these chemicals frequently spill and evaporate on the surface of a chemical hood, leaving residues that are not necessarily dangerous but may contaminate other experiments. Similarly, dust collects in chemical hoods. Weekly, use ethanol and paper towels to clean the entire surface of your chemical hood.