[5] The high incidence of antimicrobial resistance makes this treatment impractical in some areas, where the related isometamidium chloride is used instead.

[citation needed] Ethidium bromide is commonly used to detect nucleic acids in molecular biology laboratories.

Since ultraviolet light is harmful to eyes and skin, gels stained with ethidium bromide are usually viewed indirectly using an enclosed camera, with the fluorescent images recorded as photographs.

In the laboratory the intercalating properties have long been used to minimize chromosomal condensation when a culture is exposed to mitotic arresting agents during harvest.

The resulting slide preparations permit a higher degree of resolution, and thus more confidence in determining structural integrity of chromosomes upon microscopic analysis.

[citation needed] Ethidium bromide is also used during DNA fragment separation by agarose gel electrophoresis.

[11] Ethidium bromide has also been used extensively to reduce mitochondrial DNA copy number in proliferating cells.

[19] However, SYBR Green I was actually found to be more mutagenic than EtBr to the bacterial cells exposed to UV (which is used to visualize either dye).

Many alternative dyes are suspended in DMSO, which has health implications of its own, including increased skin absorption of organic compounds.

[26] Elsewhere, ethidium bromide removal from solutions with activated charcoal or ion exchange resin is recommended.

[28] Trypanosomes in the Gibe River Valley in southwest Ethiopia showed universal resistance between July 1989 and February 1993.