December 5, 2002
From safety to security: Labs adapt
Laboratory safety has taken on a whole new meaning since Sept. 11, 2001. The term formerly referred to regulations and policies designed to protect laboratory personnel from injury. Now, it also means heightened security, a growing body of federal regulations and increased paperwork, all designed to keep potential weapons out of the hands of the bad guys.
The physical changes in many laboratory spaces will be obvious. But researchers worry that the most important changes will be attitudinal. Continued calls for heightened vigilance, backed by federal regulations, could inhibit collegiality and reduce cooperation between laboratories and among disciplines.
“We are most assuredly looking at a culture change,” says Albert Berger, associate dean for research and graduate education in the School of Medicine. “The change involves a shift in the research paradigm here. This has been a place with open laboratories and strong collaboration among faculty, students and research fellows. Changes in federal law will dampen some of that.”
Although the terrorist attacks were pivotal, change at the federal level actually began in 1996, with the passage of the Select Agent Rule, which regulated the ordering, shipping and transfer of common research agents that could potentially be used in bioterrorism. All organizations handling such material, including research laboratories, were required to register.
Federal regulations passed in November 2001 and June 2002 impose restrictions on who can have access to Select Agents. Not only does federal law prohibit access by people who are under indictment for felony crimes or are fugitives from justice, but it also denies access to anyone who has ever been committed to a mental institution or is an alien from a country that support acts of international terrorism, as defined by the Secretary of State.
Moreover, the Justice Department now has the authority to conduct background checks on anyone who works with Select Agents, and the federal government may conduct inspections of any facility that uses Select Agents, with the possibility of imposing severe penalties for violations of the regulations.
A proposed change in federal rules, scheduled to go into effect later this year, will require laboratories possessing even minute amounts of toxins that are on the Select Agent list to restrict physical access to those facilities and to keep records of those who go in and come out.
The research community has responded strongly to these proposed regulations. Most researchers agree that bacterial and viral agents on the Select Agent list can pose risks if security is not tight. But the situation with toxins is different. Many laboratories use extremely small quantities of toxins — quantities small enough that they could not be harmful to more than a single individual. Yet the federal government will impose regulations as stringent as if the lab possessed gallons of toxin.
Essentially, the government is justifying this stringency by adding up the total quantity of toxin present on campus, and regulating each laboratory as if it possessed that quantity. Thus far, the research community’s plea for a “common sense” approach to the regulation of toxins has fallen on deaf ears.
“We think it’s overreaching,” says Berger. “It’s very unfortunate that the UW is put at a disadvantage because it has so much research activity. I hope in time the government will see the wisdom in some alternative measure.”
The enhanced physical security for existing facilities is estimated at $6,000 per laboratory. The number of UW labs covered by the regulations makes the prospect of paying for these changes daunting.
Discussions about security in new buildings at the UW was brought to the fore by the arson at Merrill Hall long before terrorist incidents in New York and Washington. D.C., says Marilyn Cox, director of capital and space planning, “and we’re being as responsive as possible to the security concerns of those who work there. But this is a public place. In general, locking an entire building is in opposition to the concept of our buildings as public facilities. In many cases, it’s not practical to put in locks if they limit access to places where we expect the public to go.”
Such concerns are also being discussed with regard to the new bioengineering and genome sciences buildings; bioengineering will include graduate and undergraduate instruction, and will include teaching lab spaces, whereas the genome sciences building is a research facility composed of laboratories and offices. The really tough decisions are about dividing up the interior space.
“We know what research people are doing now, but what research might they do in the future?” says Stephanie Steppe, director of health sciences academic services and facilities. That’s why laboratories will be designed to provide flexibility to meet future demands for security. “What we’re planning to do is to put security hardware in select laboratories, whether it’s required by their current use or not. Then we can use it when necessary. It’s a lot cheaper to do now than later.”
Certain laboratory spaces could be constructed as “secure suites,” in which researchers from a number of laboratories could collaborate in a secure space. “This is very much a balancing act,” Steppe says. “We’re trying to be open and accessible for researchers, but we also have to comply with the law.”
Steppe predicts that current regulations are likely to push research groups into two configurations — individual “silos” of research, and formally constituted interdisciplinary groups sharing a common space. The kinds of informal, ad hoc collaborations that have proven so fruitful in the past are going to be harder to manage.
Personnel in laboratories working with Select Agents will have to log in and out. Even shared spaces containing the agents will need access control. Just the process of designing secured spaces is labor intensive. And if a researcher decides to go after the federal dollars being devoted to bioterrorism research, a whole new set of conversations on campus will ensue.
“It’s a change in our collective consciousness,” says Karen Van Dusen, director of Environmental Health & Safety. “And it’s a very different way of looking at things. Our faculty are engaged in research because they want to make life better. Their goals are altruistic. Their world view, by nature, is not suspicious.”
The faculty in general are not opposed to the new federal regulations dealing with security, Berger says, and will adhere to them. “But it’s an unfortunate set of coincidences when an expanding research program, especially in the biomedical sciences, is faced with the need for a paradigm shift.”
