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Boston University Should Improve Laboratory Safety Oversight, City Public Health Report Says
Boston University should bolster safety oversight at its medical school laboratories in the wake of last year’s tularemia exposures, the Boston Public Health Commission said in a report released Monday (see GSN, March 21). Boston University researchers working with the tularemia bacteria violated safety procedures on multiple occasions, according to the report by Anita Barry, the city’s director of communicable disease control. The report also says that the university should have had a system to detect infection among laboratory workers, according to the Boston Globe. Three researchers became ill after exposure to tularemia. “Clearly, enough wasn’t done,” Barry said. “There certainly was room at BU for there to be monitoring so that any risk of illness would be minimized.” The Boston City Council met Monday to discuss the university’s plans for a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory and to review sanctions by water regulators against the university for dumping silver and mercury into sewer systems. “What’s going to happen when they’re dealing with substances that are much, much, much more dangerous than silver and mercury?” said Councilor Chuck Turner, an opponent of the school’s planned laboratory, which would conduct research on anthrax, plague and other deadly pathogens (see GSN, Feb. 25). The university will implement recommendations made in the report, administrators said in a statement released Monday. “Boston University Medical Center wholeheartedly endorses the recommendations of the Boston Public Health Commission that resulted from its investigation,” the statement says (Stephen Smith, Boston Globe, March 29).
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