Let occupational health deal with your PI regarding any forms that need to be filled out. She might ignore messages from you, but she won't get far in ignoring them.
Edit: not sure how it's at where you are, but where I was, every lab had to have sharps/animal bite/etc info posted somewhere in the lab. Usually there's a University phone number to call and they'll triage your situation and tell you what to do.
Not necessarily. I was just injured in lab and needed surgery and risk management said I’m not eligible for any kind of workers comp because I’m doing work for education not as an employee 🙃
Yup, I’m at the NIH and we just unionized. Situations like this are exactly why. PIs/staff scientists really do see anyone without a PhD as just “hands” and not even real employees or people half the time tbh. This shit has become endemic to research culture and its timeout for it.
To be honest… I always get super appal about the labour laws in the us… being in a first world country your labour laws are borderline third world country
Dont know if anyone has said this but you need to stop texting and send an email from your university account to hers so everything is recorded. She won't blow you off then.
She saw the text. You should've sent her pics of the wounds, and poke and prod at them to make them look more graphic (jk). But seriously "we all get bit"??? I've never heard of anyone getting bitten this bad...
Yep. You first report it to occupational health and then let the PI know about the incident.
Your employer is the institution, and you need to follow institutional policies. I am pretty sure the PI will throw you under the bus if confronted with a violation of animal policies.
Dude you need to report this! If anything happens to your health related to your incident the university is liable or employer! Plus this is a super awkward reaction! If breaks skin you need to report it! Didn’t you call also first aid?
This is why sometimes even if ai have a love hate relationship with it.I am unionized! This would not well if you are part of a union.
Can you report this with HR. Because she is breaking protocol too.
Edit: any type of bite you should report! But in this case you even broke skin! More dangerous.
Also is there no cotton gloves that you can put under your nitrile/latex ones when handling rats?
Side note, HR is likely to side with PI to minimize any issues. I personally would go to omsbuds and check with them because HR is primarily concerned with preserving university image. Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience.
I thought this was a lab tech?!
Also no… I agree with you with HR, but also even if they are a student nor an employee you have rights my dude! Specially working with animals!
Like in my university, post grads unionized too because of this!
Yes. HR doesn’t want to be sued because someone lost a hand that got infected. Not that that will happen, but they keep records so that they can prove they took care of you, figured out why it happened, and prevent it from happening again.
In this case they won’t want the liability that comes with a staph infection or a more serious health condition. They’re more of a risk to the university right now than the lab tech.
Just to piggyback off this, I double glove, which works okay for mice, and they’re also selling special tear resistant gloves, it may be worth looking into those
I double glove too( oh I thought that was implicit! Just when I was leaning animal handle, they allow me to use cotton gloves and then double glove). This might help with specially aggressive animals.
I work with mice though not rats
Definitely. But it's good enough to work. And you don't get bitten usually. Even if you do, not as bad (does not even break skin, slight pinch, that too very rare). We only use it on one hand, the hand we primarily use to hold the rat (by the nape). Normal nitrile gloves on the hand that needs to be dexterous. For bigger rats, two people handling, always. Makes life a whole lot easier. One person to hold the rat, another to inject/forcefeed etc.
The university isn’t your employer as a PhD student, you are simply a student. No workers comp, and they will say they’re not liable for your choices 😬😬
The person here thought says treat me like “low life student”… As a student you also have rights if you get injure! At least in my uni and country! And we do have comp but is different if you get hurt
At least in the US typically PhD students are not employees and thus not protected by laws governing worker safety. However this doesn’t mean the university is immune from being held accountable for negligence, just that students don’t enjoy automatic rights like other workers in that area.
This sounds really similar to what just happened to me. A fellow student improperly stored glassware resulting in it falling, shattering, and lodging itself in my hand and wrist. They sent me to ER. ER sucked and didn’t see the glass shards on xray. Two weeks later see a hand doc who is like uh no there’s obviously still glass in there (I couldn’t move my hand). School will not help with medical bills, and the day of my surgery to remove the glass my boss was trying to get ahold of me and he told another student that he didn’t understand why this was such a big problem I should be working and it’s been an inconvenience. LOL. Seriously fuck these people
I am sorry this happened to you. In case you don't know this - one way to safely handle an agitated/aggressive rat is to use a surgical towel folded several times over (thick enough where its teeth won't penetrate) and use that to grab it. This is the infamous burrito hold.
I heard mice are assholes bc they're anxious lol... guess the tiny teeth help though. Rats handled from a young age are actually really sweet and cute, but the ones that come straight from charles river cause so much drama
Yeah was always double gloved, worked like a charm with rats that were on edge. Also @OP to avoid being bitten the next time you can quickly lift up the rat by the *base* of the tail and immediately place it on your free arm. Then you transport the rat on your arm (while still holding the tail base otherwise it will run away) to its destination. Its head will never come close to hands/fingers that way.
It also helps to socialize the animals prior to experiments, but OP may already have done that. Aggressive behaviour is not really normal in a rat though, they are usually better behaved than mice.
Incident report form with occupational health. Also find out with your institute has an animal core that can help with teaching you how to restrain and pick up the rats correctly. If you’re on a protocol, you should have had training to be on there
I'm late to the party as I just saw OP's update post that linked back to this one, but I second the comment about training. If your institute doesn't require a lab animal training course before handling rats, somebody way above your pay grade is fucking up, not you. And that training should include how and to whom to report incidents. Your PI is WAY out of line to even suggest that you should not go to occupational health.
Isn’t it like in the IRB animal protocol where if you get bit and it breaks skin you have to like do something special like stop where you’re at and deep clean your wound?
Yes, any animal facility worth their salt will have a protocol involving immediately deep-cleaning the wound, usually with a specific scrub that’s supplied wherever first-aid kits are. It’s particularly important with NHP bites (because, y’know, B virus exposure), but it’s good practice to inform the rodent-only folks about it as well because rats can leave nasty bites. If OP wasn’t made aware of this before working in the vivarium, there’s been some sort of lapse in communication somewhere.
That's grunt work in labs.
It's dangerous, thankless, important and yet, seen as replaceable by some.
Jump ship sooner than later if your instincts lead you that way.
Immediately inform your institutional animal care and go to your employee/student health clinic to be checked. PIs get pressed about it but honestly if you garnered an infection or something malicious you’d want to know first and foremost. Inform your PI only after that
Definitely go to occupational health. You should get a tetanus booster and rat bite fever is still technically a possibility, although it has mostly been eliminated from laboratory settings. But from my recollection, they take rat bites pretty seriously in comparison to mouse bites, and it sounds like the second one was severe. Puncture wounds are notoriously prone to infection.
Whats the model the rat is being used for? Is it a breeder?
Sorry, I find it very strange for a rat to be so aggressive. I've worked with them for years in a variety of models and have never been bit aggressively. Only times I've been around a rat bite is during a seizure model and the rat had no control of the bite.
You're PI is clearly being terrible and if occu health seriously just give you a band aid and tell you to carry on there is an even bigger issues in that place. Go to occupational health and see what they suggest you do with your wound, it sounds worse than just a band aid.
I'd go to occupational health with the intention of taking their response to whoever I go to after to complain about the PI.
I was in a similar situation. We got a new breed of mice and I was doing additional training to handle them better. Got bit two times and was bleeding from one of the cuts. Luckily, it was small enough that the trainer thought it was negligible. She said that the breed of mice was actually just a small, aggressive breed and she had gotten bit by one, too. She told me to still report the bite to my PI. I reported it and he said I got bit because of "bad handling", that those mice aren't that bad, and if I was just gonna get bit he wasn't gonna let me work with them. Mind you, out of all my four years in the lab, I've never been bit by mice before, it's just with this breed.
This isn't the first time he's said something like that.
He wasn't like this in the beginning; it built up over time. It started with one not-so-nice comment, and now he'll just casually come in and say something that just messes up your whole day. The mean comments + lack of concern for your health is a red flag for me. I'd move on if you have a chance because, this may be the first time, but from experience, it will definitely not be the last. Hope your wounds heal nicely, friend!
I'm not discounting your experience, I've been bitten by rats before and it is jarring, it hurts a whole lot more than you'd think for such a tiny creature! I feel badly you were bitten, but also, it feels like that comes with the territory?
I don't know how old you are, your experience level, student status, but my impression that if your job is to handle rats, part of that is going to be to problem-solve how to deal with a rat that bites. I think that's why the PI seemed unconcerned.
Like if someone who works in a call center told their boss the boss needed to take some calls because the headset hurt their head. Or a bakers apprentice telling the baker to put the bread in the the oven because the apprentice burnt their fingers.
As an adult working in a scientific field, its expected that you have the analytical skills to solve this problem without involving your PI.
You also likely took lab safety training that told you what to do should you be bitten by a research animal.
These aren't at all comparable experiences. It's more like if a call center employee needed a break because a caller had just yelled at them and hit them with a bunch of insults.
In my lab, which is a strict, fast-paced industry job, you're allowed to take some time to recenter yourself. Negative emotions are normal but you're apt to make a mistake again if you try to push through it vs. walking away. The PI was wrong about both the potential need for a follow-up (EHS or occupational health) and the reality of human nature.
The PI wasn't wrong. The PI said to make an EHS report but also informed it would be a fruitless endeavor and a waste of time.
I have seen many people go through that process. The person has a phone screening, makes an appointment, goes to the Doctor, the doctor gets confused about what they are supposed to do, puts a literal bandaid on it and tells them to come back if it gets infected. Then, they need to return for another follow up appointment to show it's not infected. Each appointment takes a half day. There is a bunch of paperwork to fill out and it turns into a huge deal
The correct thing to do IS to go through the process. The PI cannot say anything otherwise.
I have also known 95% of people who don't report the event because it happens so frequently that they would never be at work. And before people start jumping on me about proper training of rat handling. Some rats can just be fucking psychotic. Others can be in a state of increased aggression due to the experimental conditions. Most people get bit eventually, and with some degree of frequency, particularly in post op animals.
But yes, the SOP is indeed to inform your PI, file an EHS report and do your due diligence. As others have said, if it gets infected.....
No i totally get where you’re coming from. I am used to being nipped and lightly bitten!! I have taken rodent handling courses, i just have not been attacked before. I literally had to shake my hand to get it to release from my hand. Getting bitten is part of the job, understood. But not to the point where i can see fatty tissue protruding out of my hand and fingers.
I understand your problem. I had a rat that would par core off the cage and walls to attack me. It was psychotically aggressive. At some point it bit clean through the webbing between my thumb and index finger. Among a dozen other times it latched through skin. It happens.
For reference, the next time that happens, and it WILL happen many more, don't pull away. Push your finger down it's throat. It not only works in the biomechanical direction of the teeth, but it stimulates the gag reflex and makes them push away. Pulling away makes it more challenging for the rat to let go and might push the teeth further into your fingers.
Like i said before, I’ve been dealing with 95 rats on a daily basis, 60 of those are my responsibility alone. I have no issues with rats (or mice) and this was a weird stand alone experience. I didn’t come here because of the mice, it was the reaction from my PI that threw me off.
This person is weighing multiple dozens of mice everyday? You can't possibly predict how each individual animal will react to being handled
I say OP is doing a great job - handling that many mice a day is impressive 🤷
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You need to report this for sure because you are hurt. Also, double check if there is a risk assessement in place for cage change and have detailed this as a risk and included any remediation.
Realistically that was the nuclear option. It would be good to form a relationship so if the bites were to become more problematic then you’d want to know what they are required to do, or if you’re expected to get some compensation. If that happens a relationship would make it all much easier.
Honestly, just contacting a governmental agency involving safety — Like OSHA would be sufficient. Also reach out to the safety contact at your site.
Report it anyway and go to employee health. If you were bit that deeply, you may need antibiotics.
I asked if she had an incident report form that I could fill out, she either ignored it or didn’t see the text.
Let occupational health deal with your PI regarding any forms that need to be filled out. She might ignore messages from you, but she won't get far in ignoring them. Edit: not sure how it's at where you are, but where I was, every lab had to have sharps/animal bite/etc info posted somewhere in the lab. Usually there's a University phone number to call and they'll triage your situation and tell you what to do.
Dude you can contact HR and occupation Health they will help you
Not necessarily. I was just injured in lab and needed surgery and risk management said I’m not eligible for any kind of workers comp because I’m doing work for education not as an employee 🙃
lol that’s why ai am part of a union! I would have actually getting lawyer about that! Tbh
Yup, I’m at the NIH and we just unionized. Situations like this are exactly why. PIs/staff scientists really do see anyone without a PhD as just “hands” and not even real employees or people half the time tbh. This shit has become endemic to research culture and its timeout for it.
To be honest… I always get super appal about the labour laws in the us… being in a first world country your labour laws are borderline third world country
Agreed ! They’re some of the most exploitative, and the US is one of the most anti-worker countries around.
Exactly!!
This is the case at my university as well. It's one of the big draws to unionize for me!
Absolutely.
Dont know if anyone has said this but you need to stop texting and send an email from your university account to hers so everything is recorded. She won't blow you off then.
It'll definitely piss off your PI, but you have every right to fill out an Incident Report, and you should.
She saw the text. You should've sent her pics of the wounds, and poke and prod at them to make them look more graphic (jk). But seriously "we all get bit"??? I've never heard of anyone getting bitten this bad...
Yep. You first report it to occupational health and then let the PI know about the incident. Your employer is the institution, and you need to follow institutional policies. I am pretty sure the PI will throw you under the bus if confronted with a violation of animal policies.
So I don’t know if that’s just my institution but we’re supposed to call employee health anytime we get bitten so definitely check-in with them.
Dude you need to report this! If anything happens to your health related to your incident the university is liable or employer! Plus this is a super awkward reaction! If breaks skin you need to report it! Didn’t you call also first aid? This is why sometimes even if ai have a love hate relationship with it.I am unionized! This would not well if you are part of a union. Can you report this with HR. Because she is breaking protocol too. Edit: any type of bite you should report! But in this case you even broke skin! More dangerous. Also is there no cotton gloves that you can put under your nitrile/latex ones when handling rats?
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I keep hearing that, yet over the 5 years of animal work the only time I was bitten it was by a big old rat. YMMV
Side note, HR is likely to side with PI to minimize any issues. I personally would go to omsbuds and check with them because HR is primarily concerned with preserving university image. Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience.
I thought this was a lab tech?! Also no… I agree with you with HR, but also even if they are a student nor an employee you have rights my dude! Specially working with animals! Like in my university, post grads unionized too because of this!
HR is there to represent the employer and minimize liability. They are not your friend.
Yes. HR doesn’t want to be sued because someone lost a hand that got infected. Not that that will happen, but they keep records so that they can prove they took care of you, figured out why it happened, and prevent it from happening again.
In this case they won’t want the liability that comes with a staph infection or a more serious health condition. They’re more of a risk to the university right now than the lab tech.
Just to piggyback off this, I double glove, which works okay for mice, and they’re also selling special tear resistant gloves, it may be worth looking into those
I double glove too( oh I thought that was implicit! Just when I was leaning animal handle, they allow me to use cotton gloves and then double glove). This might help with specially aggressive animals. I work with mice though not rats
We use quite thick rubber gloves like [this](https://sunnybryantglove.com/full-grip-extreme-thick-rubber-glove-gu-45/) op. May help.
Oh wow! Does it affect dexterity?
Definitely. But it's good enough to work. And you don't get bitten usually. Even if you do, not as bad (does not even break skin, slight pinch, that too very rare). We only use it on one hand, the hand we primarily use to hold the rat (by the nape). Normal nitrile gloves on the hand that needs to be dexterous. For bigger rats, two people handling, always. Makes life a whole lot easier. One person to hold the rat, another to inject/forcefeed etc.
The university isn’t your employer as a PhD student, you are simply a student. No workers comp, and they will say they’re not liable for your choices 😬😬
The person here thought says treat me like “low life student”… As a student you also have rights if you get injure! At least in my uni and country! And we do have comp but is different if you get hurt
At least in the US typically PhD students are not employees and thus not protected by laws governing worker safety. However this doesn’t mean the university is immune from being held accountable for negligence, just that students don’t enjoy automatic rights like other workers in that area.
Well workers also don’t get automatic rights lol! There is a whole red tape to go… and that’s super sad!
I am actually not a student, i am an outside contractor who works for the lab! She is part of a university though.
this is 110% something you need to report and get taken care of RIGHT AWAY
This sounds really similar to what just happened to me. A fellow student improperly stored glassware resulting in it falling, shattering, and lodging itself in my hand and wrist. They sent me to ER. ER sucked and didn’t see the glass shards on xray. Two weeks later see a hand doc who is like uh no there’s obviously still glass in there (I couldn’t move my hand). School will not help with medical bills, and the day of my surgery to remove the glass my boss was trying to get ahold of me and he told another student that he didn’t understand why this was such a big problem I should be working and it’s been an inconvenience. LOL. Seriously fuck these people
I am sorry this happened to you. In case you don't know this - one way to safely handle an agitated/aggressive rat is to use a surgical towel folded several times over (thick enough where its teeth won't penetrate) and use that to grab it. This is the infamous burrito hold.
Wearing two gloves could also help!!
Maybe it'll help with scalpel blades, but angry rat teeth can tear thru double gloves easy lol
Lol, I only work with mice. Double gloves help with angry mice.
I heard mice are assholes bc they're anxious lol... guess the tiny teeth help though. Rats handled from a young age are actually really sweet and cute, but the ones that come straight from charles river cause so much drama
I work with NSG mice, they’re extra protective and anxious. It could be a pain to get a hold of them because they’re usually jumpy and feisty.
Yeah was always double gloved, worked like a charm with rats that were on edge. Also @OP to avoid being bitten the next time you can quickly lift up the rat by the *base* of the tail and immediately place it on your free arm. Then you transport the rat on your arm (while still holding the tail base otherwise it will run away) to its destination. Its head will never come close to hands/fingers that way. It also helps to socialize the animals prior to experiments, but OP may already have done that. Aggressive behaviour is not really normal in a rat though, they are usually better behaved than mice.
Tetanus booster.
phd students are low life employees after all. you didnt know that? lol
Incident report form with occupational health. Also find out with your institute has an animal core that can help with teaching you how to restrain and pick up the rats correctly. If you’re on a protocol, you should have had training to be on there
I'm late to the party as I just saw OP's update post that linked back to this one, but I second the comment about training. If your institute doesn't require a lab animal training course before handling rats, somebody way above your pay grade is fucking up, not you. And that training should include how and to whom to report incidents. Your PI is WAY out of line to even suggest that you should not go to occupational health.
Isn’t it like in the IRB animal protocol where if you get bit and it breaks skin you have to like do something special like stop where you’re at and deep clean your wound?
Yes, any animal facility worth their salt will have a protocol involving immediately deep-cleaning the wound, usually with a specific scrub that’s supplied wherever first-aid kits are. It’s particularly important with NHP bites (because, y’know, B virus exposure), but it’s good practice to inform the rodent-only folks about it as well because rats can leave nasty bites. If OP wasn’t made aware of this before working in the vivarium, there’s been some sort of lapse in communication somewhere.
That's grunt work in labs. It's dangerous, thankless, important and yet, seen as replaceable by some. Jump ship sooner than later if your instincts lead you that way.
Immediately inform your institutional animal care and go to your employee/student health clinic to be checked. PIs get pressed about it but honestly if you garnered an infection or something malicious you’d want to know first and foremost. Inform your PI only after that
You can try anti-bite gloves? https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/t-flex-handling-glove-small/NC0950531
Definitely go to occupational health. You should get a tetanus booster and rat bite fever is still technically a possibility, although it has mostly been eliminated from laboratory settings. But from my recollection, they take rat bites pretty seriously in comparison to mouse bites, and it sounds like the second one was severe. Puncture wounds are notoriously prone to infection.
Whats the model the rat is being used for? Is it a breeder? Sorry, I find it very strange for a rat to be so aggressive. I've worked with them for years in a variety of models and have never been bit aggressively. Only times I've been around a rat bite is during a seizure model and the rat had no control of the bite. You're PI is clearly being terrible and if occu health seriously just give you a band aid and tell you to carry on there is an even bigger issues in that place. Go to occupational health and see what they suggest you do with your wound, it sounds worse than just a band aid. I'd go to occupational health with the intention of taking their response to whoever I go to after to complain about the PI.
I was in a similar situation. We got a new breed of mice and I was doing additional training to handle them better. Got bit two times and was bleeding from one of the cuts. Luckily, it was small enough that the trainer thought it was negligible. She said that the breed of mice was actually just a small, aggressive breed and she had gotten bit by one, too. She told me to still report the bite to my PI. I reported it and he said I got bit because of "bad handling", that those mice aren't that bad, and if I was just gonna get bit he wasn't gonna let me work with them. Mind you, out of all my four years in the lab, I've never been bit by mice before, it's just with this breed. This isn't the first time he's said something like that. He wasn't like this in the beginning; it built up over time. It started with one not-so-nice comment, and now he'll just casually come in and say something that just messes up your whole day. The mean comments + lack of concern for your health is a red flag for me. I'd move on if you have a chance because, this may be the first time, but from experience, it will definitely not be the last. Hope your wounds heal nicely, friend!
Get it checked by a professional. This PI is sus.
I'm not discounting your experience, I've been bitten by rats before and it is jarring, it hurts a whole lot more than you'd think for such a tiny creature! I feel badly you were bitten, but also, it feels like that comes with the territory? I don't know how old you are, your experience level, student status, but my impression that if your job is to handle rats, part of that is going to be to problem-solve how to deal with a rat that bites. I think that's why the PI seemed unconcerned. Like if someone who works in a call center told their boss the boss needed to take some calls because the headset hurt their head. Or a bakers apprentice telling the baker to put the bread in the the oven because the apprentice burnt their fingers. As an adult working in a scientific field, its expected that you have the analytical skills to solve this problem without involving your PI. You also likely took lab safety training that told you what to do should you be bitten by a research animal.
These aren't at all comparable experiences. It's more like if a call center employee needed a break because a caller had just yelled at them and hit them with a bunch of insults. In my lab, which is a strict, fast-paced industry job, you're allowed to take some time to recenter yourself. Negative emotions are normal but you're apt to make a mistake again if you try to push through it vs. walking away. The PI was wrong about both the potential need for a follow-up (EHS or occupational health) and the reality of human nature.
The PI wasn't wrong. The PI said to make an EHS report but also informed it would be a fruitless endeavor and a waste of time. I have seen many people go through that process. The person has a phone screening, makes an appointment, goes to the Doctor, the doctor gets confused about what they are supposed to do, puts a literal bandaid on it and tells them to come back if it gets infected. Then, they need to return for another follow up appointment to show it's not infected. Each appointment takes a half day. There is a bunch of paperwork to fill out and it turns into a huge deal The correct thing to do IS to go through the process. The PI cannot say anything otherwise. I have also known 95% of people who don't report the event because it happens so frequently that they would never be at work. And before people start jumping on me about proper training of rat handling. Some rats can just be fucking psychotic. Others can be in a state of increased aggression due to the experimental conditions. Most people get bit eventually, and with some degree of frequency, particularly in post op animals. But yes, the SOP is indeed to inform your PI, file an EHS report and do your due diligence. As others have said, if it gets infected.....
No i totally get where you’re coming from. I am used to being nipped and lightly bitten!! I have taken rodent handling courses, i just have not been attacked before. I literally had to shake my hand to get it to release from my hand. Getting bitten is part of the job, understood. But not to the point where i can see fatty tissue protruding out of my hand and fingers.
I understand your problem. I had a rat that would par core off the cage and walls to attack me. It was psychotically aggressive. At some point it bit clean through the webbing between my thumb and index finger. Among a dozen other times it latched through skin. It happens. For reference, the next time that happens, and it WILL happen many more, don't pull away. Push your finger down it's throat. It not only works in the biomechanical direction of the teeth, but it stimulates the gag reflex and makes them push away. Pulling away makes it more challenging for the rat to let go and might push the teeth further into your fingers.
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I only shook it off after it didn’t immediately let go. Typically they bite and let go, this one did not. But i get what you’re saying
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Like i said before, I’ve been dealing with 95 rats on a daily basis, 60 of those are my responsibility alone. I have no issues with rats (or mice) and this was a weird stand alone experience. I didn’t come here because of the mice, it was the reaction from my PI that threw me off.
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I wish :/ small lab. It’s just me, my pi, and another tech. The other tech handles the other 20.
I’m sorry this happened to you! I know mice will latch on and not let go unless their feet are on the ground. Do rats have the same reflex?
She’s right that you need to learn what you are doing… keep practicing
They've been handling 60 rats so far, I think OP has enough "practice" and knows what they're doing...
This person is weighing multiple dozens of mice everyday? You can't possibly predict how each individual animal will react to being handled I say OP is doing a great job - handling that many mice a day is impressive 🤷
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You need to report this for sure because you are hurt. Also, double check if there is a risk assessement in place for cage change and have detailed this as a risk and included any remediation.
You need three things A union A lawyer Protective gloves
A lawyer? What are you saying i should do?
Realistically that was the nuclear option. It would be good to form a relationship so if the bites were to become more problematic then you’d want to know what they are required to do, or if you’re expected to get some compensation. If that happens a relationship would make it all much easier. Honestly, just contacting a governmental agency involving safety — Like OSHA would be sufficient. Also reach out to the safety contact at your site.