Lesson 1 - Part 3
Preventing contamination of the environment
Infectious agents must be contained and not contaminate the environment. The second reason you should learn about biorisk management is to prevent environmental contamination. Any escape of the infectious agent from the containment system that you are working with may be considered contamination of the environment. This includes release of the agent within the facility or outside.
FAQ's
No. Even though primary containment was breached, you still have all the secondary containment provided by the biosafety cabinet. If you clean up the spill carefully and thoroughly, you have not contaminated the environment.
Yes. However, if you act quickly and correctly you can contain the infectious agent and properly decontaminate the area to ensure no further spread.
No. You have now lost containment and are contaminating the environment. All infectious materials (in an form on any surface) must be decontaminated before leaving the laboratory, animal room or facility.
Let’s look at reason number two — preventing contamination of the environment. That’s preventing escape from your facility or laboratory to the community of people or animals. This is basically keeping your friends, family, animals and pets safe
If the pathogens that you’re working with escape from your facility and go home with you, we might consider these secondary laboratory acquired infections. They’re the transfer of an occupationally acquired infection to another person outside of that work environment. Although the literature does not show that they are very common, they probably occur more frequently than we know. In this study from Harding and Byers from 1979-2001, that there were two infections from Brucella; two from salmonella where a microbiologist was preparing dinner for his family; one Lepto infection through breast milk; two infections from Bordetella pertussis to family members and one was an infection of monkey B virus to a spouse. In addition, there have also been documented cases of animal viruses being carried out of a facility on people, which where just mechanical carriers.
This next video highlights the risk of pathogens going home with health care workers. While you are watching this video, consider if this may be happening at your facility.
A good example of a laboratory escape was the release of the SARS virus in May of 2003. This started when a diagnostic laboratory in Singapore, released the virus on a person. From there it spread to Toronto, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan through airline travel and almost caused an international pandemic. This is similar to what may have occurred with COVID-19. This clearly demonstrates how small mistakes in the laboratory can lead to large international pandemics.
One of the largest documented accidental releases was the escape of Foot and Mouth Disease from the vaccine facility in England, that I mentioned previously. This was highly publicized because the virus could only have come from there and it caused a large financial loss for the country. This was clearly a breach of biocontainment that had serious consequences.
As a review, I’ve shown you that there have been incidents of laboratory escapes accidental releases or accidental environmental contaminations over the last several decades. There are many, many more that go unnoticed and unreported. Often, they’re difficult to detect when there’s a release, because the agents already exist in the environment and community. Sometimes they have very significant consequences, like creating an epidemic.