BSL-4,BSL-3,Facility Security,Biocontainment

Security has been on my mind with the issuance in September of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report to Congressional Committees entitled "Biosafety Laboratories; Perimeter Security Assessment of the Nation's Five BSL-4 Laboratories" (GAO, 2008).¹ Also, an article in the Observer² identified that terrorists have been trying to infiltrate laboratories in the UK for the purpose of obtaining hazardous materials and numerous articles in publications like the Scientist have been raising the issue to a new level of dialogue. While these two reports on very different aspects of the same subject may not be relevant to your facility, the issues raised will likely impact future security considerations on containment laboratories in general.

Biosafety and biocontainment considerations have historically been based on risk assessment. As discussed in previous columns, risk assessment in biocontainment has had a subjective component that makes it difficult to measure. It is even more difficult to explain to the lay person that does not have the knowledge and experience that allows them to utilize judgment to understand the risk and the impact of various risk mitigation measures. Unfortunately, the public and the news media would be included in this group and for the most part take the approach that if it sounds bad, it must be bad without taking the time to understand the actual facts.

The same has historically been true for security. Risk assessment and threat assessment has been used to understand the risk and develop appropriate measures to mitigate the risk. As in biosafety and biocontainment, with risk assessment one deals with probability and consequence to determine threat and risk. And again, one is often faced with subjective issues and the reality that anything is "possible." Security is a very important component of the risk management of biocontainment facilities; however, it is also one of the more complex issues having to deal with external and internal threats as well as having to protect in areas as diverse as physical security and information security.

Having worked on biocontainment facilities for twenty-five years, I have observed significant evolutions in the approach and considerations for security of containment laboratories taken by those who build and operate these facilities. My experience has been with academic institutions who work to incorporate containment within an academic campus framework; healthcare institutions, who work to include facilities appropriate to handle infectious diseases that may appear in their community; corporate entities that must handle infectious organisms in order to develop medical countermeasures; public health institutions responsible for surveillance and diagnosis emerging diseases and governmental entities whose responsibilities span the gamut of work that protects the public from the threat of infectious pathogens. In addition, I have worked with these institutional types on an international basis. I have worked on the simplest containment facilities with relatively low security risk assessment to the most secure government facilities with layered security response. Several observations:

1. One size does not fit all. There is a wide variety of risk inherent in the work and a real need for the operational and facility response to be commensurate with the risk.
2. The vast majority of institutions take their responsibilities very seriously when it comes to safety and security, given the context in which they operate. They do, however, operate with very different missions, attitudes, and constraints.
3. Operational capabilities and expertise vary greatly between entities. This creates a variety of response required for biosafety and security including facility operations and maintenance.
4. The infrastructure that allows significant work for advancement of our understanding of infectious disease is included in all of the above named settings. Much of it currently exists on open campuses that allow unobstructed access to buildings, with access control at the facility level.