• The continuing development of Fort Detrick offers business opportunities

    In some places there is a debate about the balance between the business opportunities and risks that the presence of a BioLab facility offers; in Washington County, Maryland, they concentrate on the business opportunities the sprawling — and growing — Fort Detrick (it covers 1,127 acres and employs more than 8,000 people) offers

  • Biosafety Lab-Level 4 dedicated in Galveston, Texas

    The $174 million, 186,267-square-foot lab will employ 300 people; the lab is one of two approved in 2003 by NIH (the second is being built in Boston); critics question placing a BSL-4 lab on a barrier island vulnerable to hurricanes

  • Unsettling lack of security at Level 4 Biosafety Labs

    Biosafety labs (BSLs) handle the world’s most dangerous agents and diseases; only BSL-4 labs can work with agents for which no cure or treatment exists; there are five BSL-4 labs in the United States, and GAO conducted a study of these labs’ perimeter security; you are not going to like what the GAO found

  • FDA hires 1,300 new doctors and scientists

    Staffing drive, launched just five months ago, will result in an estimated 10 percent increase in the FDA’s work force

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  • New York officials want Plum Island to remain a Level-3 BioLab

    DHS is considering upgrading the Plum Island BioLab from Level-3 to Level-4 so it could conduct research into the deadliest diseases; the department argues that Plum Island’s relative isolation would make an accidental pathogen release less costly relatively to such release from a mainland-based lab; New York officials strongly disagree

  • Blumenthal: Impact statement regarding Plum Island seriously flawed

    Connecticut’s attorney general: “[DHS’s] draft environmental impact statement is profoundly flawed — factually deficient, and legally insufficient — mis-assessing the monstrous risks of siting a proposed national bio- and agro-defense facility on Plum Island”

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  • The science behind the anthrax investigation

    For seven years researchers at Sandia National Laboratories worked in secrecy on developing method to identify atnthrax spores; sensitive transmission electron microscopy (TEM) allowed researchers to connect the anthrax attacks to the same source

  • Decision on national biolab nears

    Five states are vying to host to new, $450 million national biolab which will replace the aging Plum island facility; some lawmakers are questioning the selection process: an internal DHS review ranked the Mississippi site in Flora 14th out of 17 sites originally considered, yet it made it to the final five

  • NIST tighten rules after plutonium spill in lab

    On 9 June about 1/4 gram of powdered plutonium spilled from a vial at a NIST lab in Boulder, Colorado; an investigative committee found that a failure in the safety management system was exacerbated by a “casual and informal research environment that appears to have valued research results above safety considerations”

  • U.K. says country is a good place for scientific research

    U.K. government body releases a reference work showing major research infrastructures, including light sources, research ships, innovative laboratories, and social data sets

  • Worries about CDC pathogen handling

    In a new $214 million infectious disease laboratory at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, scientists are conducting experiments on bioterror bacteria in a room with a containment door sealed with duct tape

  • CDC biolab not ready after 2 1/2 years

    A new CDC biosafety lab was supposed to open in the fall of 2005; it is still not open, and legislators begin to wonder why; they note that at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, it took less than seven months for its BSL-4 lab to become operational after construction was finished

  • Boston biolab: Panel urges review of possible lab threats

    As community opposition to the almost-complete Boston University biolab continues, a panel of experts says neighborhood’s concerns — and safety — should not be excluded from consideration of final approval for lab opening

  • Government admits accidents at Plum Island biolab

    The biolab on Plum Island, off the tip of Long Island, is the only lab allowed to do research on the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease; DHS officials admit that since 1978 here have been several accidental releases of the virus into cattle in holding pens

  • DOE penalizes Battelle for lax worker safet at national lab

    Department of Energy penalizes Battelle $250,000 for lax worker safety procedure at Idaho National Laboratory; this is the latest in a series of penalties imposed on contractors operating national labs