17 Health, Safety, Fieldwork, Biospecimens, and Remote Work
This chapter replaces the original manual’s COVID-specific section with a broader, durable policy covering the range of settings our hybrid group works in: remote and home offices, fieldwork and community sites, any biospecimen handling, and shared facilities. It also retains a flexible public-health protocol for when one is needed.
17.1 General principle
Your health and safety come first. No deadline, dataset, or deliverable is worth your wellbeing. Tell the PI or your mentor about any health or safety concern — including allergies or conditions that affect your work — so we can support you.
17.2 Remote and hybrid work
Most of our work is computational and can be done remotely. To make remote work healthy and effective:
- Ergonomics matter. Set up a workspace that protects your eyes, wrists, and back; take regular breaks.
- Sustainable hours. We do not measure worth by hours online. Get the work done well; protect rest and boundaries (Chapter 19 covers wellbeing and burnout prevention more fully).
- Availability, not surveillance. Keep your availability current so work is planned realistically; we trust members to manage their time. (We do not use geo-location time-tracking; that practice from the wet-lab era is retired.)
- Security travels with you. Remote work follows the same data-governance rules (Chapter 12): no restricted data on personal devices or unsecured networks; analyze controlled data only in approved environments.
- Stay connected. Remote members are deliberately included in meetings, decisions, authorship, and the social life of the group (Chapter 6).
17.3 Fieldwork and community sites
When work happens in communities, partner clinics, or field settings:
- Plan and brief first. Confirm site contacts, logistics, consent procedures, and an emergency plan before going.
- Respect community partners. We are guests; follow partner site rules and cultural norms. Communities are collaborators, not subjects.
- Never photograph or record research participants (Chapter 12). Capture only what consent and IRB allow.
- Travel safely. Follow institutional travel and safety policies; don’t work alone in unfamiliar settings without a check-in plan.
- Protect data in transit. Field-collected data follows the same security and de-identification rules from the moment it’s captured.
17.4 Biospecimens (when applicable)
If a project involves biological specimens (human blood, tissue, or environmental bioaerosol samples):
- Complete required bloodborne-pathogen and biosafety training and maintain relevant vaccinations (e.g., Hepatitis B) per institutional policy when handling human blood/fluids.
- Follow the biosafety level, PPE, and handling procedures for the facility and protocol.
- Label, store, log, and chain-of-custody specimens per the protocol; never improvise. Inventory and location of record live in Aliquary (Section 17.5).
- Dispose of biological and chemical waste per institutional and regulatory rules.
- Wear appropriate PPE and follow facility dress/safety codes when in a lab space.
Exact biosafety levels, PPE requirements, vaccination/clearance rules, waste procedures, and emergency contacts depend on the specific facility and institution. These must be confirmed locally before any wet-lab or biospecimen work and recorded in the project’s operating manual.
17.5 Sample inventory with Aliquary
When a project holds physical samples — human biospecimens, environmental bioaerosols, or other aliquoted materials — Aliquary is our sample-inventory system of record. Spreadsheets and ad-hoc freezer lists are not an inventory.
Aliquary is how we:
- Register samples (with the metadata the project requires).
- Map freezers, racks, and boxes so every vial has a known home.
- Look up anything by barcode when someone needs it at the bench.
- Track aliquots and freeze–thaw cycles so usage history is auditable.
17.5.1 Workflow: register → locate → track → export
- Register. Create the sample record in Aliquary when the material enters inventory — before it goes into a box.
- Locate. Assign (and keep current) freezer / rack / box / position; use barcode lookup to find it again.
- Track. Record aliquoting and freeze–thaw events as they happen; do not backfill from memory.
- Export. When a project archives, migrates, or ends, export the inventory so we retain a complete record with no lock-in.
Governance for what may be stored in Aliquary (de-identified only, tenant isolation, audit trail, export) is in Section 12.6. Account access is provisioned at onboarding and revoked at offboarding (Chapter 20).
Aliquary is a product of Felix E. Rivera-Mariani, PhD, LLC (FERMLLC) — the same parent LLC under which the RIPLRT Institute operates. It is a sibling in-house product, not a third-party vendor and not the RIPLRT Institute itself. We use it because it fits our inventory needs and our governance rules; the relationship is stated here so members and partners can see that plainly.
17.6 Public-health and infectious-disease protocol (flexible)
Rather than a single pandemic-specific section, we keep a scalable protocol that activates when public-health conditions require it (a respiratory illness surge, a new advisory, fieldwork in an outbreak area):
- Follow current institutional, local, state, and federal guidance — that guidance, not this manual, is authoritative and current.
- The PI may activate measures proportionate to the situation: remote-first work, masking, distancing, capacity limits in shared spaces, testing, or pausing in-person activity.
- Stay home when sick; we would always rather you rest than risk others. Sickness is never penalized.
- For fieldwork during an active outbreak, add a site-specific risk assessment to the project operating manual.
17.7 Reporting incidents
Report any injury, exposure, near-miss, safety concern, or health-and-safety question to the PI promptly. Reporting is expected and never penalized — early reporting keeps everyone safe.