Lab weathers storms, not concerns?

Written byAlla Katsnelson

| 2 min read

A high-security pathogen lab in Galveston, Texas, survived the hurricane that hit the region last month, but is now the focus of safety concerns plaguing biosafety research of late. Galveston is an island often hit by hurricanes. Ike, which hit in September, caused more than $700 million in damage to the University of Texas facilities there, about $18 million of that to research labs, Nature linkurl:reported.;http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081022/full/4551012a.html But the pathogen lab escaped unscathed. "The entire island can wash away and this is still going to be there," the lab's deputy director, James W. LeDuc, linkurl:told;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/us/29lab.html?_r=1&oref=slogin the New York Times. Still, some say that locating a lab working with dangerous pathogens such as linkurl:Ebola;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54827/ and Marburg virus in a geographical area so vulnerable to storm damage is risky. "As destructive as it was, Hurricaine Ike was only a Category 2 storm," Ken Kramer, director of the Sierra Club's linkurl:Lone Star Chapter;http://lonestar.sierraclub.org/ told the Times. "A more powerful storm would pose an even greater threat of a biohazard release." The lab is a kind of sister institution to a similar but much more contentious project in linkurl:Boston,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55087/ which has been stalled over safety concerns. Both were pushed by President George W. Bush's administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Galveston has run a small-scale BSL-4 lab since 2004, but a state-of-the-art $174 million building housing an expanded facility is set to open in November. Both safely survived the storm. The new building, 30 feet above sea level, was constructed to withstand the area's wild weather, from 140-mile winds to power outages. Extensive air filters, waste disposal protocols, and plans for stopping research and destroying some live viruses 24 hours before a storm hits should be enough to keep the facilities safe, officials say, though concerns still linger. Galveston is one of the five currently operating BSL-4 labs in the country; two other labs on that list were found to have serious linkurl:security shortfalls;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55093/ earlier this month. Four more BSL-4 labs, including Boston's biolab, are now in various stages of planning or construction. Officials are set to decide the final location for one of them, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, by the end of this year.

Lab weathers storms, not concerns?

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