Glitch prompts shutdown of biohazard lab at UTMB

Houston Chronicle, Jan. 26, 2008

Officials have temporarily shut down the biological hazard lab at UTMB after the failure of an internal door during experiments with avian flu and hemorrhagic fever, a UTMB spokeswoman said Friday. There was no risk of exposure resulting from the failure Wednesday of the internal door to the room where the experiments were being conducted.

Jan. 25, 2008, 11:29PM
Glitch prompts shutdown of biohazard lab at UTMB
Officials say door failure posed no exposure risk

By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

GALVESTON - Officials have temporarily shut down the biological hazard lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch after the failure of an internal door during experiments with avian flu and hemorrhagic fever, a UTMB spokeswoman said Friday.

There was no risk of exposure resulting from the failure Wednesday of the internal door to the room where the experiments were being conducted, said spokeswoman Marsha Canright.

She said no infectious organisms escaped and no one was in the lab at the time. Four doors are between the procedure room where the experiments are conducted and the entrance to the most secure part of the lab, Canright said. There are 10 sealed doors between the door that failed and the outside.

She said all the infected mice are in sealed containers.

"If there had been any public health hazard, (the public) would have been notified immediately," Canright said.

The Robert E. Shope Laboratory was shut down temporarily Thursday as a precaution and will be fumigated today, she said.

The laboratory is rated by the National Institutes of Health at laboratory biosafety level 4, the highest rating given to laboratories for work with dangerous and exotic agents that pose a high risk of airborne laboratory infections and life-threatening disease.

The outer-most door of four doors entering the most secure area failed in 2005. This time, officials decided to shut down the laboratory until the German manufacturer METALL+PLUS inspects and repairs it, Canright said. Technicians from Germany are expected to arrive Feb. 4, she said.

Delayed experiments

There is no urgent reason to restart the lab, she said, although three new experiments will be delayed because of the closure.

"The lab will not be reopened to new experiments until the cause of the problem is determined and resolved," Canright said.

An alarm sounded when the door opened and an engineer donned a biohazard suit, entered the lab and closed it.

The door failed once in the morning and once in the afternoon, she said.

Rabbi Jimmy Kessler, chairman of the six-member Community Liaison Committee, said UTMB promptly notified the oversight committee about even the smallest incidents, including this one.

Seven experiments were under way when the door between the procedure room and the chemical shower failed, Canright said. The experiments on mice included HFN1, or avian flu virus, and two deadly hemorrhagic fevers: Ebola, a strain from Africa; and Omsk, a tick-borne disease that occurs in central Russia.

Previous incident

Deadly diseases studied by the lab have included Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Junin fever and tick-borne encephalitis.

The outer door to the most secure area failed on June 23, 2005, when it was improperly programmed to open during a power failure, UTMB spokesman Jim Kelly said.

There have been no accusations of sloppy procedures at UTMB like those that led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year to suspend operations of the biohazard lab at Texas A&M University.

The CDC temporarily suspended operations at the university's National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense, part of an effort to study vaccines to counteract biological weapons.

harvey.rice@chron.com

LAB HISTORY
Incidents at Shope biohazard lab since it began operations in 2004:

• June 23, 2 005: A software programming error causes a door to open. No contamination.
• April 26, 20 06: An air-hose assembly connection on a biohazard suit falls apart as a trainee exits the room where experiments are done just before entering a chemical shower. No contamination.
• July 11, 20 06: A mouse kicks a syringe, causing it to stick into the palm of an employee. The syringe had been used to administer an antibiotic to a mouse infected with Bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax. The employee was given two weeks of antibiotics.
• Jan. 23, 20 08: The door to the procedure room where experiments are conducted fails twice, causing the lab to shut down until the cause can be determined.