Micro­bi­ol­o­gist Dr. Taronna Maines injects a chicken egg with the H5N1 flu virus inside a BSL-​​3 bio­log­i­cal safety cab­i­net. Photo: Brian Thomas Humek

With their Acme Rocket Skates car­ry­ing them toward the edge of the fis­cal cliff at break­neck speed, the Republican-​​controlled House is keep­ing their self-​​proclaimed “laser-​​like” focus on the econ­omy. They’re not doing this in the way we might expect, how­ever. Appar­ently, this “laser-​​like” focus involves inves­ti­gat­ing any­thing which has the poten­tial to embar­rass Democ­rats or the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion. The whole Solyn­dra and Obama birth cer­tifi­cate thing never panned out, even though these inves­ti­ga­tions were clearly evi­dence of a laser-​​like focus on job creation.

So, the way Repub­li­cans are mak­ing sure Amer­i­cans have jobs is by hold­ing a series of extremely loud and incred­i­bly close inves­ti­ga­tions on issues related to unem­ploy­ment, such as women’s vagi­nas, Fast & Furi­ous, and now minor lab­o­ra­tory acci­dents at Fed­eral labs.

CDC Build­ing 18

Build­ing 18 at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) cam­pus in Atlanta, Geor­gia, is a $214 mil­lion facil­ity, opened in 2005, which is sup­posed to be cre­ated expressly for work­ing with haz­ardous organ­isms. How­ever, like almost all such facil­i­ties in which I’ve worked, the building’s ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems do not func­tion as designed. I think the main prob­lem is with sci­en­tists com­mu­ni­cat­ing with archi­tects and archi­tects com­mu­ni­cat­ing with work­men regard­ing how these facil­i­ties are sup­posed to work and why. 

There are four lev­els of biosafety in use in lab­o­ra­to­ries nationwide.

Biosafety Level 1 (BSL-​​1) is the most com­mon level at which work is done. Rou­tine micro­bi­o­log­i­cal work, mostly with the gut bac­terium Escherichia coli (E. coli),  is done on open bench­tops at BSL-​​1. E. coli is the work­horse of the mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy researcher, and is used as a DNA “copy­ing machine” in tens of thou­sands of labs nationwide.

Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-​​2) is also com­monly used; I have car­ried out and super­vised BSL-​​2 work. Pro­ce­dures are done with light pro­tec­tive equip­ment inside a bio­log­i­cal safety cab­i­net. BSL-​​2 organ­isms would include Strep­to­coc­cus (which causes “strep throat”, hence the name of the disease).

Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-​​3) facil­i­ties are uncom­mon; there are per­haps a hand­ful in most states, mostly asso­ci­ated with aca­d­e­mic med­ical cen­ters and uni­ver­si­ties doing federally-​​funded research. BSL-​​3 organ­isms, by def­i­n­i­tion, could cause seri­ous dis­ease and eco­nomic dam­age if they are released. BSL-​​3 work is always done within a bio­log­i­cal safety cab­i­net and per­son­nel always wear pro­tec­tive equip­ment. The entire BSL-​​3 lab is sup­posed to be “neg­a­tive pres­sure” so that any air that leaks flows from (say) a hall­way into the BSL-​​3 lab. All air com­ing from the BSL-​​3 lab is sup­posed to pass through a high-​​efficiency par­tic­u­late arrest­ing (HEPA) fil­ter.

Biosafety Level 4. Note the higher-​​level safety pro­ce­dures in use.

There are BSL-​​4 facil­i­ties, too, doing work on really nasty organ­isms like Ebola virus, but, like job cre­ation, those are out­side the scope of the present Con­gres­sional investigation.

Appar­ently, there have been chronic prob­lems with Build­ing 18. For exam­ple, on April 9, high-​​containment ani­mal facil­i­ties lab man­ager Kismet Scar­bor­ough wrote an e-​​mail to a num­ber of CDC offi­cials includ­ing direc­tor Thomas Frieden:

[The CDC] will do any­thing … to hide the fact that we have seri­ous prob­lems with the air­flow and con­tain­ment in this whole build­ing …  [CDC safety offi­cials say] it doesn’t mat­ter if the dirty BSL 3 lab blows pos­i­tive into the clean cor­ri­dor as long as it is not sus­tained. … [This is a] totally ridicu­lous response … [I am] hor­ri­fied and dis­mayed at the events sur­round­ing safety and the fact that even though this has been taken clear up the chain of com­mand all the way to Dr. Frieden, no one is will­ing to admit the mis­take or more impor­tantly fix it.

Scar­bor­ough was wit­ness to an inci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 16. That sin­gle inci­dent, in which no one was harmed and no one was placed at risk, is the basis for the cur­rent Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion, led by Con­gress­man Michael Burgess (R-​​Denton, TX). Trained as a med­ical doc­tor, Burgess is a mem­ber of the House Energy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee that is inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent, which is clearly tightly linked with job cre­ation and eco­nomic development.

CDC safety inspec­tor Eddie Jack­son reported in his email to a top safety offi­cial that, dur­ing a tour group, a tech­ni­cian opened a door and the group felt air flow out of a poten­tially con­t­a­m­i­nated lab and into a com­mu­nal hallway.

As the door closed a very notice­able puff of air could be felt com­ing through the slit in the win­dow out into the ‘clean’ cor­ri­dor. Don’t know whether this was a fluke or the norm, and the rea­son I’m com­ment­ing is one of the vis­i­tors seemed con­cerned and has been talk­ing about it since we’ve come back.

Needed pro­tec­tion when using lasers for job creation.

Clearly, this mat­ter has to do with job cre­ation and mer­its a Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion, since no one was harmed and appar­ently CDC can’t be trusted to carry out their own inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. Rather than let the CDC’s inves­ti­ga­tion take its course, Burgess has become involved. Just what kind of safety pro­ce­dures he’s using while oper­at­ing his laser to focus on the econ­omy is not clear, but per­haps we’ll need another Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion for that issue.

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