Biosafety
The international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety deals primarily with the agricultural definition but many advocacy groups seek to expand it to include post-genetic threats: new molecules, artificial life forms, and even robots which may compete directly in the natural food chain.
When biological warfare or new, currently hypothetical, threats (i.e., robots, new artificial bacteria) are considered, biosafety precautions are generally not sufficient.
Biosafety level refers to the stringency of biocontainment precautions deemed necessary by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for laboratory work with infectious materials.
They create and monitor the biosafety standards that must be met by labs in order to prevent the accidental release of potentially destructive biological material.
Biosafety is related to several fields: Chemical hazards typically found in laboratory settings include carcinogens, toxins, irritants, corrosives, and sensitizers.
Scientists estimate that within the next few decades, organism design will be sophisticated enough to accomplish tasks such as creating biofuels and lowering the levels of harmful substances in the atmosphere.
[4] Scientist that favor the development of synthetic biology claim that the use of biosafety mechanisms such as suicide genes and nutrient dependencies will ensure the organisms cannot survive outside of the lab setting in which they were originally created.
These have caused a lot of excitement in the pharmaceutical industry as they will be cheaper to produce, allow quicker production, as well as enhance the knowledge of virology and immunology.
Biosafety, in medicine and health care settings, specifically refers to proper handling of organs or tissues from biological origin, or genetic therapy products, viruses with respect to the environment,[7] to ensure the safety of health care workers, researchers, lab staff, patients, and the general public.
[10] The World Health Organization attributes human error and poor technique[10] as the primary cause of mishandling of biohazardous materials.
[13] Poor record keeping, improper disposal, and mishandling biohazardous materials result in increased risks of biochemical contamination for both the public and environment.
[9] The third point, the personnel must be informed about any special hazards and be required to review the safety or operations manual and adhere to established practices and procedures.
[9] In June 2009, the Trans-Federal Task Force on Optimizing Biosafety and Biocontainment Oversight recommended the formation of an agency to coordinate high safety risk level labs (3 and 4), and voluntary, non-punitive measures for incident reporting.
[19] Laws relating to biosafety are not easily accessible and there are few federal regulations that are readily available for a potential trainee to reference outside of the publications recommended in 42 CFR 73.12.
[17][18] Therefore, training is the responsibility of lab employers[17] and is not consistent across various laboratory types thereby increasing the risk of accidental release of biological hazards that pose serious health threats to the humans, animals and the ecosystem as a whole.
[20] but currently, there is no single federal regulating agency directly responsible for ensuring the safety of biohazardous handling, storage, identification, clean-up and disposal.
In addition to the CDC, the Environmental Protection Agency has some of the most accessible information on ecological impacts of biohazards, how to handle spills, reporting guidelines and proper disposal of agents dangerous to the environment.
Following these incidents, the CDC established an External Laboratory Safety Workgroup (ELSW),[34] and suggestions have been made to reform effectiveness of the Federal Select Agent Program.
