Worries about CDC pathogen handling
safety risks. “This is yet another incident that calls into question the CDC’s self-inspection policy. I highly doubt that the CDC would accept duct-taped doors on the privately owned bio labs it inspects,” Dingell said Friday. “If the going rate for a leaky door and roll of duct tape is $200 million, then I think I’m in the wrong line of business,” Dingell said.
The 368,000-square-foot lab building, known at the agency as Building 18, is formally called the Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory. It is located on CDC’s main campus off Clifton Road. Construction was completed in the fall of 2005 and about 500 workers and scientists moved into its many offices and labs. The building’s crown jewel — a suite of four maximum containment Biosafety Level 4 labs — still has not been certified as safe to operate nearly three years after it were supposed to open. These BSL-4 labs are designed to contain smallpox, Ebola and other lethal germs while scientists work in spacesuit-like protective gear. CDC officials have said the delay is not a result of any major construction or design problems with the BSL-4 labs or the building. Rather, they said the agency’s earlier opening dates were unrealistic given the complexity and uniqueness of the new labs. A year ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that CDC release records about safety issues at the lab building, including last June’s power outage. So far the agency has not released any records. On 18 December the building was evacuated after its new medical waste incinerator was started for a test, then vented smoke into the high-containment lab area, according to internal CDC memos recently obtained by the AJC. Excessive heat caused the failure of the incinerator’s bypass stack, which tore away from its anchor bolts and fire caulk, the records show. The damaged stack was repaired in January — under warranty and without additional taxpayer cost, CDC officials told AJC last week. The incinerator problem has played no role in the delays, they said, and it has since been certified by state regulators and is now operational.
The duct-taped Q fever lab, which is a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) lab, is currently the only operating lab in the building’s “high-containment block,” which houses the four BSL-4 labs as well as three other BSL-3 labs. One of the safety features of these high-containment labs is that they
