Group Reports Additional Texas Biosafety Mishaps

The Sunshine Project watchdog group has uncovered laboratory accidents involving anthrax and other disease agents at three University of Texas sites, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 7).

Personnel at the University of Texas at San Antonio failed to wear gloves or respirator protection on April 12 when they entered a Biosafety Level 3 tularemia laboratory, according to a document obtained by the Sunshine Project through the Texas Public Information Act.  There was no research occurring at that time and the laboratory had been decontaminated the night before.  The workers, sent into the laboratory to fix air filters, apparently received antibiotics from their doctors and suffered no ill effects.  The school reported the incident to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On May 7, liquid from vials containing anthrax bacteria leaked inside a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, CIDRAP reported.  Documents obtained by the Sunshine Project indicated that laboratory workers possibly exposed to the aerosolized form of anthrax were given vaccine boosters and placed under monitoring.  There were no known infections and the university reported the incident to the Centers for Disease Control.

Both anthrax and tularemia are designated as Category A bioterrorism agents.

There were also at least four known cases of infection by the Category B agent shigella among University of Texas at Austin laboratory personnel between 2002 and 2005, according to the Austin American-Statesman and the Sunshine Project.  The workers all recovered, but the university failed to adequately investigate or report the incidents, the newspaper reported.

These reports follow a number of incidents at Texas A&M University that led the federal government to halt biodefense research at that school.

“What we are witnessing in Texas is not bad luck, it is the crumbling of the biodefense lobby’s safety façade,” Sunshine Project head Edward Hammond, who has called for increased federal monitoring of biodefense laboratories, said in a press release (Lisa Schnirring, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, Sept. 19).

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had received approval to conduct Ebola research in a facility with a lower security level than mandated for such work.

Yoshi Kawaoka was studying material that could be used in the production of the Ebola virus.  Federal guidelines state Ebola-related research must be done in a highest-security Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, but a university committee allowed him to work in a BSL-3 facility. 

The research did not involve the actual Ebola virus.  It was halted following a warning from the National Institutes of Health and has since been moved to a more secure laboratory in Canada, university officials said.

“It’s more of a technical violation than a safety violation.  No one was at risk,” said university biological safety officer Jan Klein.  “It was a matter of how you read the guidelines.  NIH took a broader read of the guidelines than we were aware of and using” (Ryan Foley, Associated Press/Wisconsin State Journal, Sept. 19).

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