Biohazards on the subway? Oh, hell naw!

OK, so there's a saying about things happening in threes. Well, this time, I hope that saying is wrong.

First, I rode an Orange Line train around 12:30 this afternoon and sat across from a guy transporting six boxes stamped with BIOLOGICAL SUBSTANCE CATEGORY B stamped on them. One box was on a seat next to him and the other five boxes were inside a large, clear plastic bag emblazoned with a large red and black BIOHAZARD logo. The bag had been scrunched closed at some point, but had since worked its way open. Given that I was traveling north from Roxbury, I suppose it's possible that the guy was coming up from the state medical lab in JP. Kinda weird that he'd carry something like that on the subway, though.

Second, my neighborhood associations are beginning to circulate a Herald article from 2 weeks ago. Here's the title: 

Boston University, insurer in flap over leaky biolab pipe repair$

Catchy headline (no pun intended). Seriously, though, this lab is supposed to be a place where scientists study the world's most dangerous and incurable diseases. They haven't accomplished putting the building together correctly, despite having an extra year or two to put it together, but, they expect the surrounding communities to accept that their research in the middle of the city is safe and that they will take adequate measures to contain and alert officials of problems. Riiiiight.

Anyway, I'm hoping that the things-happen-in-three saying is wrong. In one day I saw a guy casually transporting materials marked biohazard on the subway and read about BU's leaky bio lab. The last thing any of us needs to come across is news of an actual loss or leakage of hazardous biological agents in the middle of Boston. It really shouldn't be that easy to cross paths with things of this nature in the middle of a city in a post-9/11 world. 

If the Herald article is no longer available online, I've copied it below.

Boston University, insurer in flap over leaky biolab pipe repair$

By Thomas Grillo
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 

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Boston University wants an insurance company to pay the $5 million it cost to replace a leaky containment system at the school’s controversial biolab, but the insurer is fighting the claim.

Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America has filed suit in U.S. District Court and is asking a judge to declare that it does not have to pay for the installation of a new piping system designed to dispose of biological waste.

“In a routine inspection of the lab’s plumbing and drainage systems, we discovered that they were not performing as designed,” said Gary Nicksa, BU’s vice president for operations. “We wanted no question about the safety of these systems so we instructed the contractor to replace them. Now, there’s a question about whether it’s covered by insurance.”

Caryn L. Daum, Travelers’ attorney, said she could not comment because the lawsuit is pending.

The waste containment piping system was designed to collect materials from the labs and transport them to equipment that would treat and dispose of them. But multiple leaks were detected and it was determined that the joints had failed, according to court documents filed by the insurer. A Travelers review determined that the pipe failures resulted from faulty workmanship. Travelers is not obligated to pay the claim because the policy excludes such losses, the lawsuit said.

But BU argues that the failure of the containment system stemmed from the use of a leak detection fluid, not from faulty workmanship.

This is not the first time Boston University’s $198 million National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories have faced a judge. In 2006, opponents filed suit alleging that the environmental study for the 195,000-square-foot lab was inadequate. As a result, the opening of the seven-story South End facility built to study the world’s deadliest germs has been delayed until next spring.

Comments

[Ah-clem]

Scares the living daylights out of me. We knew from the very beginning that this thing was a boondoggle being shoved down our throats, and this is just more evidence of the incompetence that has accompanied this project from the beginning.

Maybe you heard that they are having fun with a biohazard lab in Galveston, Texas too. It seems that it survived hurricane Ike, sorta.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6101518.html

ttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/02/MN9T13QAS7.DTL

What idiot decided that Galveston would be a great place to build a biohazard lab in the middle of a hurricane zone in a city that was all but leveled once before in a hurricane.

'Wasn't That a Mighty Storm.'

Chilling.

[Lyss]

What stop did he get on at?

[3D]

Dunno. I got on at Jackson.

[Eric]

I saw this on UniversalHub, and since I work with Category B Biologic Substances for a living, I figured I'd just shed a bit of light.

By definition, materials in Category B are those materials which do *NOT* cause serious injury or illness to healthy people or animals. They can be blood or urine specimens (or tissue samples, etc.), but NOT from someone known to have a serious infectious disease.

They are accepted by all of the major shipping carriers, including the US Postal Service and FedEx, without a dangerous goods declaration.

If someone has taken the trouble to properly mark the boxes like those were, I would suspect there's a good chance they've also properly packaged the specimens. That means two separate layers of airtight packaging with absorbent materials in between sufficient to absorb any liquid contained, plus a sturdy outer packaging that can withstand a drop from a height of (something like) 5 feet without breaking.

I often go to the homes of people who can't come in to our hospital, collect blood, and bring it back. By regulation, it needs to be properly packaged and marked when I do so. As you can imagine, a few times neighbors have seen the labels and called police. It's a bit of a pain, but usually the responding officer(s) tell the complainant that someone with nefarious intentions wouldn't carry a properly, conspicuously marked package, ask me to explain the whole "Category B" business, and then send me on my way.

All that being said, I don't take public transit when I'm transporting those specimens... where I work, it's our policy not to... but I don't know if there are any regulations (MBTA, DOT, or other) against doing so. I might pose the question to the MBTA police, just to satisfy my own curiosity.