BiolabsInvestigation finds serious violations of safety rules in CDC’s handling of deadly germs

An investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) conducted a review, from 23 June to 3 July, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and cited the agency for failing to follow proper procedures before and after the anthrax scare which led to the potential exposure of more than eighty lab workers to live anthrax viruses in June. A subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce is holding a hearing today about the CDC’s mishandling of anthrax, as well as avian influenza, another deadly microbe.

The subcommittee will ask CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden about the current mishaps as well as whether recent biosafety lapses have implications for federal oversight of “select agents,” the most dangerous pathogens, and the high-containment labs that handle them.

Yahoo News reports that in its investigation, APHIS found multiple violations of federal rules for handling dangerous microbes. In one account, unidentified “materials” were carried from one CDC lab to another in two plastic Ziploc bags, which failed to meet the requirement that such containers be “durable.” In addition, anthrax was stored in refrigerators in an unrestricted hallway, while the key to one “sat in its lock,” APHIS reported. During its inspection, “containers of anthrax were missing and had to be tracked and located by the inspection team,” while other samples remained in an unlocked lab not approved to handle select agents.

APHIS also concluded that the CDC failed to inform and provide adequate support to lab workers before and during the anthrax breach. CDC workers including those in the biodefense lab who were cleared to work with anthrax, “had not been trained to decontaminate all relevant areas or properly use decontaminants,” the report said. CDC’s on-site clinic was also ill-prepared to respond to workers who had been potentially exposed to anthrax. Some workers “left the clinic without knowing the extent of their risk,” and some were not examined for five days, the report said.

The CDC did not reference the APHIS investigation submitted on 10 July in its own 11 July report. “The reason we didn’t reference the APHIS report in our report is we received it on the day ours was being prepared for release,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner, adding that the CDC would “work as quickly as we can to respond to the issues” that APHIS had cited.