NEIDL Ventilation Monitoring Was Temporarily Halted
Original article from: BU Today posted on June 1, 2016. by BU Today Staff
A malfunctioning network switch at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) resulted in a shutdown of parts of the lab’s ventilation monitoring system for eight hours on March 21. The malfunction impeded the flow of air out of the Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) labs. The event, which was immediately reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), was detailed in a draft report by outside engineers Colorado-based Merrick & Company, whose final report is expected within the next several weeks. Once the event had been analyzed, BU also notified the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The University has suspended BSL-3 research until the outside engineers review recommended remedial work to prevent future ventilation system malfunctions. Gloria Waters, BU’s vice president and associate provost for research, says the University will contact the CDC and the BPHC when the remedial work is complete. “We would want to hear back from them before we start to do research again,” she says.
Waters says the event did not pose a threat to public health because no research was under way, safety protocols were in place, and redundant safety systems continued to operate as intended. She says in both BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs, pathogens are exposed to air only within biosafety cabinets, which have their own filtration system, while a redundant filtration system operates in the rooms containing the cabinets.
NEIDL’s BSL-4 labs are not in use, says Waters, because they have not yet received final regulatory approval, and consequently there were no BSL-4 pathogens or research in those laboratories. (BSL-4 research requires the highest safety levels.) Even if research had been under way, Waters says, “The underlying safety systems, which include airtight seals around the doors, worked as intended, and the malfunction would not have created a public risk.”