Applied Biosafety最新文献

Introduction: Emergency preparedness is not a novel topic. What has been novel is the fast pace at which organizations, including academic institutions, have had to adapt to infectious disease outbreaks since 2000.

Objective: The goal of this article is to highlight the various environmental health and safety (EHS) team activities during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to ensure that on-site personnel was safe, the research could be conducted, and critical business operations such as academics, laboratory animal care, environmental compliance, and routine healthcare functions could continue during the pandemic.

Methods: The response framework is presented by discussing first the lessons learned in preparedness and emergency response during outbreaks that occurred since 2000, namely Influenza virus, Zika virus, and Ebola virus. Then, how the response to the COVID-19 pandemic was activated, and the effects of ramping down research and business activities.

Results: Next, the contributions of each EHS unit are presented, namely, environmental, industrial hygiene and occupational safety, research safety and biosafety, radiation safety, supporting healthcare activities, disinfection, and communications and training.

Discussion: Lastly, a few lessons learned are shared with the reader for moving toward normalcy.

Introduction: The widespread transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has increased scientific and societal interest in air cleaning technologies, and their potential to mitigate the airborne spread of microorganisms. Here we evaluate room scale use of five mobile air cleaning devices.

Methods: A selection of air cleaners, containing high efficiency filtration, was tested using an airborne bacteriophage challenge. Assessments of bioaerosol removal efficacy were undertaken using a decay measurement approach over 3 h, with air cleaner performance compared with bioaerosol decay rate without an air cleaner in the sealed test room. Evidence of chemical by-product emission was also checked, as were total particle counts.

Results: Bioaerosol reduction, exceeding natural decay, was observed for all air cleaners. Reductions ranged between devices from <2-log per m³ room air for the least effective, to a >5-log reduction for the most efficacious systems. One system generated detectable ozone within the sealed test room, but ozone was undetectable when the system was run in a normally ventilated room. Total particulate air removal trends aligned with measured airborne bacteriophage decline.

Discussion: Air cleaner performance differed, and this could relate to individual air cleaner flow specifications as well as test room conditions, such as air mixing during testing. However, measurable reductions in bioaerosols, beyond natural airborne decay rate, were observed.

Conclusion: Under the described test conditions, air cleaners containing high efficiency filtration significantly reduced bioaerosol levels. The best performing air cleaners could be investigated further with improved assay sensitivity, to enable measurement of lower residual levels of bioaerosols.

Introduction: The health and safety issues encountered by biosafety professionals in the daily conduct of their work is rarely limited solely to potentially infectious pathogens. A basic understanding of the other types of hazards inherent to laboratories is necessary. As such, management of the health and safety program at an academic health institution sought to ensure crosscutting competency for its technical staff, including staff members within the biosafety program.

Methods: Using a focus group approach, a team of safety professionals from a variety of specialties developed a list of 50 basic health and safety items that any safety specialist should know, inclusive of basic but important information about biosafety that was considered imperative for staff members to understand. This list was used as the basis for a formal cross-training effort.

Results: Staff responded positively to the approach and the associated cross-training, and overall compliance with an array of health and safety expectations was experienced across the institution. Subsequently, the list of questions has been shared broadly with other organizations for their own consideration and use.

Discussion/conclusion: The codification of the basic knowledge expectations for technical staff within a health and safety program at an academic health institution, which includes the biosafety program technical staff, was warmly received and helped establish what information was expected to be known and what issues warranted input from other specialty areas. The cross-training expectations served to expand the health and safety services provided despite resource limitations and organizational growth.

Introduction: In response to a series of biosafety incidents in 2014, the White House directed two high-level expert committees to analyze biosafety and biosecurity in U.S. laboratories and make recommendations for work with select agents and toxins. Overall, they recommended 33 actions to address areas related to national biosafety, including promoting a culture of responsibility, oversight, outreach and education, applied biosafety research, incident reporting, material accountability, inspection processes, regulations and guidelines, and determining the necessary number of high-containment laboratories in the United States.

Methods: The recommendations were collected and grouped into categories previously defined by the Federal Experts Security Advisory Panel and the Fast Track Action Committee. Open-source materials were examined to determine what actions had been taken to address the recommendations. The actions taken were compared against the reasoning provided in the committee reports to determine if the concerns were sufficiently addressed.

Results: In this study, we found that 6 recommendations were not addressed and 11 were insufficiently addressed out of 33 total recommended actions.

Discussion and conclusion: Further work is needed to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity in U.S. laboratories handling regulated pathogens (biological select agents and toxins [BSAT]). These carefully considered recommendations should now be enacted, including determining if there is sufficient high-containment laboratory space for response to a future pandemic, developing a sustained applied biosafety research program to improve our understanding of how high-containment research should be performed, bioethics training to educate the regulated community on the consequences of unsafe practices in BSAT research, and the creation of a no-fault incident reporting system for biological incidents, which may inform and improve biosafety training.

Significance: The work presented in this study is significant because previous incidents that occurred in Federal laboratories highlighted shortcomings in the Federal Select Agent Program and the Select Agent Regulations. Progress was made on implementing recommendations to address the shortcomings, but efforts were lost or forgotten over time. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a brief window of interest in biosafety and biosecurity, and an opportunity to address these shortcomings to increase readiness for future disease emergencies.

Introduction: Carcasses from animal experiments with RG-3 pathogens should be decontaminated onsite in Austria.

Objective: The aim of this study was to find out if the use of pass-through autoclaves for the decontamination of animal carcasses (up to 40 kg of weight) could serve as a routine method for smaller laboratories, as the installation of special carcass decontamination plants may be cost prohibitive.

Methods: Biological indicators (BIs) were implanted into the carcasses of animals of different sizes and species with a novel method using stainless steel pipes. The bodies were placed in autoclavable plastic bags and equipped with thermal probes by insertion through the rectum. Subsequently a factory default autoclave cycle for liquids was performed, which holds a core temperature of 121°C for 20 min.

Results: The weight of the carcasses ranged from 1 to 42 kg, the duration of the individual cycles reached from 2.2 to 17.23 h. Decontamination was successful every single time as shown by the BIs. The application through the natural orifices with the help of the application tools seems to offer a reliable alternative for implanting the BIs into the carcasses without creating new openings. Insulation properties did not pose substantial challenges to the process. Limitations on the packaging procedure were identified in carcasses larger than 30 kg.

Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, using pass-through autoclaves represents an option as a routine method for the decontamination of animal carcasses up to at least 40 kg.

Introduction: Institutions implementing a biorisk management system need to establish comprehensive guidance to support the implementation of biosafety and biosecurity practices. A biorisk manual describes how a biorisk management system will be implemented in an organization and includes topics such as facility-specific policies and procedures to safely and securely handle, store, and dispose of biological agents and toxins in adherence with international guidance.

Methods: To promote the adoption of biosafety and biosecurity in Pakistan, the Pakistan Biological Safety Association and Health Security Partners developed a biorisk manual writing project in 2019 in partnership with experts from the BioRisk Association of the Philippines 2015, Inc. This project helped 13 researchers and laboratory professionals in Pakistan develop biorisk manuals for their institutions. The project comprised two phases: an in-person group training on how to develop a laboratory biorisk manual, and 10 months of additional remote mentoring assistance for the development and finalization of the biorisk manual tailored to each institution's specific needs. By the end of the project, 12 of the 13 participants had customized biorisk manuals for their institutions in place. In January 2022, a survey was conducted among the workshop participants to learn how successful they were in implementing the developed manual in their institutions.

Results: Participants reported varying degrees of successful implementation. They also suggested that the biosafety and biosecurity associations should engage top management at institutions to strengthen administrative support and provide a sufficient workforce to promote implementation.

Purpose: The aim of this work was to review and analyze changes to the practice of biosafety imposed by pandemics.

Methods: A narrative review of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 and prior pandemics from the perspective of a working virologist.

Results: By definition, pandemics, outbreaks, and other emergencies are transient phenomena. They manifest as waves of events that induce unforeseen needs and present unknown challenges. After a pandemic, the return to normality is as crucial as the scale-up during the exponential growth phase. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an example to study operational biosafety and biocontainment issues during community transmission of infectious agents with established pandemic potential, the propensity to induce severe disease, and the ability to disrupt aspects of human society.

Conclusions: Scaling down heightened biocontainment measures after a pandemic is as important as scaling up during a pandemic. The availability of preventive vaccines, and therapeutic drug regimens, should be considered in risk assessments for laboratory studies. There exists the need to preserve situational memory at the personal and institutional levels that can be served by professional societies.

Introduction: The global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic ushered in a new way of life in a short time, with many lasting impacts that have yet to be fully realized. This pandemic threat landscape resulted in massive efforts to increase safety, minimize person-to-person transmission, and rethink how society approaches personal and collective health issues. The buildings and environments in which we live, work, and learn now became environments that pose new risks. As a result, many institutions began asking what improvements could be made to those environments to reduce the spread of infection of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases.

Methods: The authors conducted a review of past projects and emerging technologies to evaluate which applications in containment laboratories could represent an example of how engineering controls can improve safety by protecting the workers inside the laboratories as well as the public interfacing the laboratories.

Discussion: Engineering controls, technology, and safety systems are hallmarks of modern containment laboratories that may provide some context into extrapolating these elements into non-laboratory environments, providing there is coordination with a risk assessment methodology. In this study, the authors explore new technologies proposed for controlling SARS-CoV-2 in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, and potential impacts to the operations and maintenance of those systems.