Welcome everybody to this, the second module in this series on biorisk management. In this module, we are going to discuss risk assessment. This important topic often gets overlooked, although it’s the one that should be done first before you do anything else. The first step in biorisk management is to determine what the risks are, which will then dictate what you need to do about them.

Do you ever think about risk as you go about your daily life? Yes you do, your brain does it all the time – as we drive, as we cross the street the choices of food we eat and so on. What about at work in your biomedical environment – do you think about the special risks at your job? There are a lot of different biomedical environments – such as hospitals, clinical laboratories, research facilities or animal rooms, each with their own special hazards and risks. Does working with a patient infected with Ebola have the same risk as determining what pathogens are in a fecal sample or working with a cow infected with Brucella? Intuitively we know they are different, but how different, where does the risk come from and can we measure it?

In this session we will explore risk, define it better and discuss ways in which you can get a better idea of where it comes from and therefore how you might control it. As in any occupation, the more you know about the risks of your job the better you can manage them and be safe. There have been many examples of people getting hurt or killed when working in biomedical environments and we don’t want you to be another statistic.

Let’s start with the big picture first – why would you want to do a risk assessment anyway? Well, it really comes down to safety and being able to manage the inherent risks of your work – which is what biorisk management is really all about. When we look at the overall process of biorisk management, we see that it basically has four parts that loop back around in a circle. First you begin with identifying the hazards, then you do the risk assessment, next mitigate the risk and finally you determine if the risk was adequately controlled or managed by monitoring. In the middle of all of that and throughout the process is risk communication – informing everyone of what is happening at each step.

The hazard identification and risk assessment parts are the most important because they inform the other parts, but are often overlooked or not documented. Without hazard recognition and risk assessment you don’t know what or how to mitigate, nor do you know how to determine if the risk was controlled or fixed.

Before we begin, we need to look at a few definitions. Hazard. For this course, a biosafety hazard is the source or biological agent that can hurt you. For example, a bacteria, virus or toxin. Risk is the chance or probability that that hazard will hurt you. Risk assessment is a procedure that analyzes a particular process or situation in order to determine the likelihood and consequences of an adverse event occurring.

People often get confused and use the terminology hazard and risk interchangeably. They’re, not the same thing. I want to make sure you’re very clear on the differences between hazard (that thing that can cause you harm) and risk, which is the potential that that hazard will cause you harm. Watch this video to learn the difference.
So now that you know the difference between a hazard and risk, how do you get hurt in life? Typically, there are three steps: first, you need the hazard; second, you need to interact with that hazard, and; third that interaction needs to be in an unsafe way.

Let’s begin with danger recognition. If you don’t realize that there’s a danger or some way of getting hurt, you probably won’t take any precautions. For example, if you don’t know that the pan on the stove is hot, you might pick it up without any gloves on. You first have to know or recognize that something has the potential to cause you harm before you take any action to protect yourself.

I want you now to stop for a minute and think about the hazards in your facility. Take a few minutes and list on a piece of paper all the things in your work environment that can hurt you. You may be in a hospital or a diagnostic facility or work in an animal room. This is going beyond just the biological things – list everything from a sharp object to a chemical to a fire or a biological agent. See how many you can write down and then come back to the program.

Here I’ve listed a few laboratory hazards. How does your list compare to this? As you know from working in a laboratory, there are a lot of potential hazardous things in your work environment that could do you harm. First, the biological organisms and their toxins. That’s where this program is going to focus because we are talking about biosafety. There are also radiation sources from a variety of different machines and equipment including the UV lights that you use for disinfection. There are of course the chemicals that you deal with and then the physical hazards such as electricity, the trips, the slips and falls, sharp objects, and many others. If you work with animals like rats, mice, cows, pigs, and others – they are all potential hazards in as well. In this program, we’re just going to focus on the biological hazards.

Before you go on to the next part in this lesson, please take the quiz.