Biolab Will Be Closed Until Risk is Assessed
By Gabriel Leiner (From Boston Courant), October 18, 2008
A controversial level 4 bio-safety lab in the South End will remain vacant and used only for training exercises until a Blue Ribbon Panel assesses the facilit6y’s health risk to the city.
The national Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) on Albany Street is located as close as 285 feet from residents and would be used to research treatments for anthrax, ebola and other bacteria and viruses with no known cures.
Officials from the Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) have proposed to devote about 16 per cent of the NEIDL to bio-safety level 4 (BSL-4) research, which carries the most dangerous classification from the federal government.
The rest of the space is planned for either BSL-3 or BSL-2 research or administrative space.
The NEIDL will open in February for “training and familiarizing research and safety personnel with the facility” according to BUMC spokesperson Ellen Berlin.
Last December, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the lab could not open because the state’s approval of the National Institute of Health (NIH) biolab was “arbitrary and capricious,” and needed more public vetting. Since then, the NIH has formed a 12-member panel of scientists and doctors to study the dangers of experiments at the labs.
“Our task is to consider whether a broad range of infectious agents should be considered acceptable for research a th the NEIDL,” said Adel Mahmoud, a molecular biologist from Princeton University and chair of the NIH’s Blue Ribbon Panel.
Residents, elected officials and medical professionals addressed their concerns at a meeting wit h the panel on October 14.
If airborne germs leaked from the lab, resident Donovan Walker said officials would risk not being able to immediately communicate with thousands of people around the lab, some of whom do not speak English, and notify them how to find safety.
“You must consider whether we are prepared to respond to an accidental release of a pathogen into the city,” City Councilor Charles Yancey told the panel.
Police and fire officials do not have the resources to be the first responders to a chemical outbreak, according to Yancey.
The city’s evacuation plan is poorly designed and would increase the risk of confusion in the aftermath of an outbreak, added James Alan Fox of the Union Park Neighborhood Association (UPNA).
Other speakers questioned the danger behind the transport of harmful chemicals on “untrustworthy” FedEx trucks through city blocks, the screening process allows entry into the building and how closely scientists and researchers are watched by security.
Several attendees spoke in favor of the lab “It’s something we’re going to have to live with,” said clinical professor Jeffrey Gelfand of Massachusetts General Hospital, who added that he studies infectious diseases almost daily and that he and family members reside in Boston and Cambridge.
After hearing input from more than 50 people, Mahmoud said the panel would incorporate community concerns into their risk assessment study before submitting it to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni.
The study will be completed in late 2009, said Mahmoud, and used by Zerhouni and other NIH officials to recommend what type of research should be permitted at the lab.
BUMC hopes to use the $200 million lab as they initially proposed in 2003 for medical research, according to National Institute of Health (NIH) spokesperson Michael Kurilla.
Depending on the recommendation from the NIH, the building could be retrofitted for use as office s space, noted a BUMC representative who attended the meeting.