Biosafety Month

Biosecurity focuses on protecting biological agents from theft, loss, or misuse. Laboratory biosecurity refers to the protection, control of, and accountability for biological agents and toxins, and critical relevant biological materials and information within laboratories to prevent unauthorized possession, loss, theft, misuse, diversion, and intentional release.

• Physical Protection: This involves the protection of the actual building housing your lab, including things such as locks on doors, perimeter security, and practices limiting entry into the most sensitive areas of your lab such as areas where infectious agents are stored and animals housing. 
• Personnel Suitability/Reliability: These practices include ID badges for staff entering the lab spaces, limiting access to visitors and escorting visitors at all times, and biosecurity training for staff. Some experiments and agents may require that staff undergo criminal background checks
• Pathogen Accountability: These practices include regular inventory checks, inventory requirements for transfers within and outside your laboratory, inactivation and disposal of cultures after they’ve been used, tracking of internal possession and proper labeling of substances.

Risk Groups and Biosafety Levels

What is a risk group, and how does it differ from a biosafety level?

Risk Groups

• The risk group refers to the risks associated with a specific agent to a healthy, adult, human.
• The risk group alone does not describe the specific biosafety level that will need to be used to perform experiments with the organism. You will also need to review the specific experiments and procedures being performed with the organism to determine the appropriate biosafety level required to safely work with the organism.
• There are 4 risk group designations. Risk Group 1 (RG1) is the lowest risk group, and Risk Group 4 (RG4) is the highest.

Biosafety Level (BSL)

• Physical containment is designated by a biosafety level (BSL). The level is a description of the lab practices/techniques, safety equipment, lab facility design, and training requirements needed to safely perform specific experiments and biohazards in a specific space.
• The biosafety level is not a designation, or synonym, for the organism(s) being used.
• There are 4 biosafety levels. Biosafety level (BSL-1) is the lowest, and Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest.

Prior to beginning a new project, experiment, or a change in the scope of your research, you should

• Conduct a new risk/hazard assessment
• Review the lab space(s) and containment equipment to confirm that the necessary equipment is available and any required certificaitons are up to date
  
• Review the PPE requirements and confirm that the appropriate PPE is available
• Review standard operating procedures and edit them to include new procedures
• Review training requirements and training records of personnel to confirm that personnel are prepared to perform the procedures and to handle the agents being used

The University Biosafety Manual provides information and general SOPs pertaining to the safe use of biological agents in Virginia Tech laboratories. The university manual is a useful tool for all researchers. The manual is available online, and can be downloaded as a PDF. You are not required to maintain a printed copy of the university biosafety manual in the laboratory.

The university biosafety manual is NOT a replacement for your Lab-Specific Biosafety Manual. The lab-specific biosafety manual includes details related to the personnel, equipment, and procedures that are specific to the spaces used by your lab group. All laborarories handling biological materials, regardless of the containment level, must have a lab-specific biosafety manual. The lab-specific biosafetyt manual should be printed and maintained in an area of the laboratory that is accessible to all personnel.

The university biosafety manual and the template for your lab-specific biosafety manual can be accessed from the Environmental Health and Safety website and from your Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) protocol using IBC Protocol Management.