Getting dressed up to go into the clean lab is not a trivial feat. You have to take off your shoes, put on your 'clean lab Crocs,' go through a series of doors, put on your personal protective equipment, and only then can you get to work.
Equally, when you want to leave the clean lab, you have to undo all that.
During allergy season, I retreat into the clean lab and try to stay there all day as to avoid the sniffles and headaches that California's dusty pollen likes to give me. The exceptionally well-filtered air in the clean lab usually has my worst allergies cleared within 30 minutes. It's amazing.
On these days, when I'm attempting to stay in the clean lab continuously, I find myself regularly ruminating "Hmmmm... I'm so glad that I don't study sulfur (S) isotopes (like my advisor did for her PhD thesis)." See, I enjoy healthy, fibrous lunches, which obviously make you fart, and S is a natural component of farts. So, everytime that I fart in the clean lab I snicker and say to myself "I'm so glad I don't study S isotopes."
So, this begs the question, do S isotope geochemists hold their farts to avoid contamination or do they go through the time-consuming clean lab entry/exit process every time they want to 'let one rip?'
If you're a S isotope chemist, please feel free to educate me on your experience! :-)
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