NIH panel hears risk assessment suggestions
South End News
May 8, 2008
by Linda Rodriguez
managing editor
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) took suggestions on conducting an in-depth risk assessment of the Boston University BioLab from the committee that roundly rejected the agency’s previous risk assessment in November. The NIH’s blue ribbon panel heard the recommendations of the National Research Council (NRC) on May 2, in its second meeting, webcast from the NIH’s Bethesda, Maryland, offices.
“The NIH asked us to provide advice to the blue ribbon panel as to how NIH should go about doing the risk assessment for the biosafety level-4 lab,” explained Dr. John Ahearn, chair of the committee appointed by the NRC to draft the recommendations. “This was a follow-on to the report we did last year, in which we reviewed the environmental statements and said it was done very badly.”
The blue ribbon panel, which held its first meeting on March 13, was convened in the wake of the NRC’s harsh criticism of the NIH’s risk assessment for the BU BioLab, officially known as National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory (NEIDL). That risk assessment itself was a second attempt; in 2006, a U.S. District Court judge sided with a group of South End and Roxbury residents who filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the NIH failed to comply with National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) procedure when it filed its first risk and site suitability assessment. The judge then ordered the agency to conduct a supplemental risk assessment. A draft of that supplemental report was issued in August 2007 and stated that the presence of the lab would not pose a threat to the neighborhood, a federally designated Environmental Justice community. Not long after, in November, the NRC, an independent nonprofit that advises government policy on scientific matters, issued its scathing report on the NIH’s risk assessment, calling it “not sound.” The blue ribbon panel, according to the NIH, is part of their attempt to complete their risk assessment.
In this report, according to the letter to the NIH that accompanied it, the NRC committee “largely refrained from prescribing specific methods and other details, electing instead to structure its suggestions for the blue ribbon panel around a small number of overarching questions about the risks associated with operating the [BioLab].”
“We outlined the typical approach in risk analysis in which you first look at what can go wrong, and then you look at how likely it is, and then you look at the consequences,” said Ahearn. Asked how the NIH’s previous risk assessment went wrong, Ahearn said that, among other things, the NIH’s work wasn’t “scientifically credible,” that they hadn’t done a “reasonable job of describing their scenarios,” and that they didn’t provide “accurate data to back up their claims.”
With this report, the committee is recommending that the NIH take a far more in-depth look at what could go wrong with the lab, such as the release of one of the infectious agents being studied there; the ability of the surrounding community to deal with such a release, including the response of emergency and public health officials; the probability of it happening and how; and that any analysis of a worst-case scenario also take into account the characteristics of the area in which the lab is sited.
Among the committee’s suggestions to the blue ribbon panel was that the NIH better and more transparently communicate with the community at large around the risks associated with the lab. Since the NIH awarded BU the $128 million grant to build the facility in 2003, the BU BioLab has been the subject of fierce contention, public outcry and colorful protests. In its report, the committee pointed out that the on those points of contention, the NIH must be all the more transparent.
“We pointed out that the risk communication should be much clearer and more transparent,” said Ahearn.
Even as the blue ribbon panel drafts its next risk assessment, construction on the Albany Street site continues. The building is expected to be complete by October 2008, at a cost of $198 million. At that point, when the lab will begin its work is dependent on the NIH’s completion of the court-ordered supplemental risk assessment. According to court documents filed earlier this year, that risk assessment will likely not be issued until April 2009. Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Boston Medical Center, said that because the NIH process is ongoing and the scope of their studies is not yet determined, it’s “premature to say when the building will open.”
“The NIH Blue Ribbon Panel is being thorough in gathering ideas and suggestions about what should be included in future risk analyses. We are confident that the Blue Ribbon Panel will consider the thoughtful comments presented to them today by the NRC as they deliberate on the scope of environmental studies,” she said, in an e-mailed statement.
The community will have an opportunity to put questions and concerns to the blue ribbon panel, during a public meeting on May 16, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., at the Gardner Auditorium at the State House.