What is a biosafety cabinet used for?

A biosafety cabinet is a specialized piece of equipment designed to provide a controlled and sterile environment for working with potentially hazardous biological materials. Its primary function is to safeguard the user from exposure to infectious agents or harmful aerosols while also protecting the samples being handled from contamination.

Within a biosafety cabinet, air is filtered and maintained at specific flow rates to create a sterile working area, which helps ensure that any potentially harmful particles or pathogens do not escape into the laboratory environment. This feature is crucial in research and clinical settings where the handling of biological samples, such as cultures or recombinant DNA, poses risks to laboratory staff and public health.

The other choices relate to different functions that are not specific to biosafety cabinets. For example, while ventilation for hazardous chemicals can be important in laboratory settings, it is typically managed by general fume hoods rather than biosafety cabinets. Storing equipment safely is a function of laboratory storage solutions but is not the main purpose of a biosafety cabinet. Conducting physical experiments may occur in various laboratory settings, but the specific role of a biosafety cabinet is focused on biological safety.