Laboratory+Biorisk+Management

Biological containment laboratories are critical for vaccine development, diagnostic work as well as basic research into human, animal and plant pathogens. Laboratories wishing to operate safely and responsibly must implement management systems that ensure appropriate biorisk controls are identified and implemented.

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Biorisk in laboratories encompasses both biosafety and biosecurity, where biosafety involves harm to people and other organisms whereas biosecurity covers the deliberate unauthorised removal of materials. We believe that biosafety and biosecurity are closely interlinked, and that common systems are required to manage both effectively.

These systems include the more traditional technically orientated areas such as facility design or personal protective equipment, but also include areas such as “Management and Organisation”, “Project Management” and “Human Factors” which we believe can provide significant contributions towards controlling biorisks.

Within laboratory biorisk management research theme we currently have the following major projects:

Laboratory Biorisk Management Standard Development

There is currently no international standard for practices in containment laboratories, hence DNV initiated a project in 2005 to address this issue, and discovered there was great interest from operators all over the world for such a standard. The development of a standard was therefore initiated by DNV, together with the European and American Biosafety Associations, and the WHO.

Laboratory Task Risk Assessment

Biological containment laboratories are necessary for diagnostic and detection work, and are also critical for research and development.

BIOSAFETY-EUROPE

Biosafety-Europe is a coordination action funded through the European Commission’s sixth framework and which started April 1st 2006. The project has 20 partners from 11 European countries and has an overall aim of promoting European harmonisation and the exchange of practices relating to biosafety and biosecurity management of biological containment facilities.

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