FAQs
Common Questions
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General Biosafety
Biological safety (biosafety) is the art of keeping yourself safe from infectious diseases. For members of the general public this involves being careful what you eat, protecting yourself other people that carry infectious diseases, washing your hands and treating cuts properly, among others things. For those that work in laboratories or directly with infectious pathogens, biosafety involves using special practices, safety equipment and often special facilities.
You don’t want to get sick — do you? Knowing the basics of biosafety is just good common sense or public health. It just helps you protect yourself from getting sick as often. If you don’t get sick they you also protect others around you (friends and family).
As the name implies, it is the management of biological risk. In a biomedical facility this is usually done through a combination of various controls. Typically these come from three main areas: 1) Use of administrative controls consisting of good practices, procedures and training, 2) Use of safety equipment, such as ventilated enclosures (e.g. biosafety cabinet), safe sharps or safety centrifuge cups, 3) use of strategic engineering controls in an appropriate facility design.
Disease Trasmission
The main ways a person or an animal become infected by biological agents are through portals of entry into the body. These are: 1) the wet areas of eyes, nose, mouth (mucous membranes), 2) inhalation of infectious aerosols in the air, 3) ingestion of infectious agents through the mouth (liquid or solid), 4) breaks in the skin, 5) sexual transmission.
There are a lot of things you can do, but mainly as a member of the public you should be aware of that the hazard (the pathogen) exists and protect yourself by putting up barriers or stopping transmission.
Be aware of the main routes of transmission, which are: 1) oral (through the mouth via what you eat or drink), 2) inhalation (through the air) via what you breath in, 3) exposure of the wet areas of the eyes, nose and mouth (via splashes or sprays), 4) through the skin if the skin is broken (e.g. cuts, scrapes, punctures, burns, and others), 5) sexual transmission via exchange of body fluids during intercourse.
There are lots of different barriers that you can use to stop disease transmission. These are commonly called “Personal protective equipment” or PPE. They include face masks (to protect the eyes, nose and mouth from splashes), respirators (to protect from infectious aerosols), gloves to protect from oral transmission and skin breaks), clothing to protect from surface contamination and more. Each type of PPE is specific to the route of transmission, but not to the pathogen and should be chooses based upon your knowledge of how your might get infected.
Risk Assessment
A biohazard is anything biological (or derived from) that can cause harm to other living organisms (e.g. human or animal).
A risk assessment is simply a means of you determining how likely it is that a undesired event will happen to you. In this case, how likely is it that your might get infected and how bad could that infection be.
Risk can be defined as a function of how likely it is that an event will occur and how serious that event will be. For example, how likely is it that you will become infected and how serious will that infection be.
Safety Equipment
Safety equipment is just anything that you use during your work to protect you from the hazard, lower the risk and make you safer. This typically includes all the personal protective equipment that you might wear, but also includes physical pieces of equipment, for examples the biosafety cabinet, safe sharp devices or centrifuge safety caps.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is anything that a worker will put on (this is why it is personal) that protects them from a specific hazard. For example, a glove to protect the hand from a hazard, such as heat or extreme cold. The type of PPE should be chosen based upon a risk assessment starting with the hazard that you are protecting against. See the faq section on PPE to learn more.
At home, your best safety equipment is that personnel protective equipment that blocks the common routes of infection. So the best safety equipment at home are your gloves, safety glasses and face mask.
In the laboratory, the biosafety cabinet is the best piece of biological safety equipment. This engineering control is the very best piece of safety equipment for routine work in a biomedical facility. A typical certified biosafety cabinet (Type II, A2) will protect you, the environment and the product. If possible, all the work with pathological agents should be done using this piece of safety equipment. See the faq section on biosafety cabinets to learn more.