Investigative Reporter, Author of Pandora's Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, and the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting @ University of Missouri School of Journalism
The lack of rigorous applied biosafety research in recent years is among the major challenges to protecting against the release of dangerous pathogens from research facilities around the world.
The foundations of modern biosafety practices in use today were pioneered by Dr. Arnold Wedum and the safety division at the U.S. Army’s Camp Detrick (later Fort Detrick) in Maryland in the decades after World War II. Wedum and his team, as I detail in Pandora’s Gamble, did intensive investigations trying to determine the source of each of the hundreds of accidental infections associated with Detrick’s biological experiments. These lab-associated infections weren’t occurring just among the scientists performing experiments. The invisible, accidental spread of pathogens outside of the labs was also resulting in infections among secretaries, animal caretakers, dishwashers, carpenters and the occasional spouse.
Because so few of these infections could be traced to an obvious lab accident, pioneering research was done during this era using high-speed photography to examine how infectious aerosols could be generated by routine lab activities like the removal of stoppers out of bottles or the transfer of liquid specimens between containers. Wedum’s team studied the risks posed by animals used in experiments: not just from biting or scratching workers, but also their ability to spread infectious organisms by shaking their contaminated fur or through human contact with their cage litter. They even studied the risks of microbes contaminating the beards of men working in labs.
But this kind of intensive study of the risks – and effectiveness – of lab procedures and equipment has not been the norm in recent decades, according to experts interviewed for Pandora’s Gamble. While government and private funders have spent billions of dollars on biological research – including funding experiments that make pathogens more dangerous than what is found in nature, there has been little funding or focus – since the Wedum era – on studies to assess lab safety equipment and practices. For a good overview of the research needs in applied biosafety, please see: Basic Scholarship in Biosafety is Critically Needed To Reduce Risk of Laboratory Accidents.
It is important to note that the specific paper cited in this post (Kurth 2022) is focused on biosafety level 4 labs, the highest safety level. These particular labs, which represent a small fraction of biological research labs around the world, have different layers of engineering than lower level labs. The duct-taped door at the CDC, for example, was in a biosafety level 3 lab that had a reversal of its airflow – blowing positive (outward) into a clean corridor.
And while the post here cites a couple of papers questioning the necessity of certain aspects of directional airflow in lab facilities, it's worth noting that these papers, so far, have not resulted in changes in what are considered current best practices for containment at BSL-3 and BSL-4 lab facilities.
The current 6th edition of Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, often just referred to as the BMBL, is considered a leading advisory document "recommending best practices for the safe conduct of work in biomedical and clinical laboratories from a biosafety perspective." In it you can find multiple references to the importance of directional airflow in modern labs. https://www.cdc.gov/labs/BMBL.html
But the bottom line is that there remains a significant need for applied biosafety research on a wide range of engineering and human factors.
The lack of rigorous applied biosafety research in recent years is among the major challenges to protecting against the release of dangerous pathogens from research facilities around the world.
The foundations of modern biosafety practices in use today were pioneered by Dr. Arnold Wedum and the safety division at the U.S. Army’s Camp Detrick (later Fort Detrick) in Maryland in the decades after World War II. Wedum and his team, as I detail in Pandora’s Gamble, did intensive investigations trying to determine the source of each of the hundreds of accidental infections associated with Detrick’s biological experiments. These lab-associated infections weren’t occurring just among the scientists performing experiments. The invisible, accidental spread of pathogens outside of the labs was also resulting in infections among secretaries, animal caretakers, dishwashers, carpenters and the occasional spouse.
Because so few of these infections could be traced to an obvious lab accident, pioneering research was done during this era using high-speed photography to examine how infectious aerosols could be generated by routine lab activities like the removal of stoppers out of bottles or the transfer of liquid specimens between containers. Wedum’s team studied the risks posed by animals used in experiments: not just from biting or scratching workers, but also their ability to spread infectious organisms by shaking their contaminated fur or through human contact with their cage litter. They even studied the risks of microbes contaminating the beards of men working in labs.
But this kind of intensive study of the risks – and effectiveness – of lab procedures and equipment has not been the norm in recent decades, according to experts interviewed for Pandora’s Gamble. While government and private funders have spent billions of dollars on biological research – including funding experiments that make pathogens more dangerous than what is found in nature, there has been little funding or focus – since the Wedum era – on studies to assess lab safety equipment and practices. For a good overview of the research needs in applied biosafety, please see: Basic Scholarship in Biosafety is Critically Needed To Reduce Risk of Laboratory Accidents.
It is important to note that the specific paper cited in this post (Kurth 2022) is focused on biosafety level 4 labs, the highest safety level. These particular labs, which represent a small fraction of biological research labs around the world, have different layers of engineering than lower level labs. The duct-taped door at the CDC, for example, was in a biosafety level 3 lab that had a reversal of its airflow – blowing positive (outward) into a clean corridor.
And while the post here cites a couple of papers questioning the necessity of certain aspects of directional airflow in lab facilities, it's worth noting that these papers, so far, have not resulted in changes in what are considered current best practices for containment at BSL-3 and BSL-4 lab facilities.
The current 6th edition of Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, often just referred to as the BMBL, is considered a leading advisory document "recommending best practices for the safe conduct of work in biomedical and clinical laboratories from a biosafety perspective." In it you can find multiple references to the importance of directional airflow in modern labs. https://www.cdc.gov/labs/BMBL.html
But the bottom line is that there remains a significant need for applied biosafety research on a wide range of engineering and human factors.