Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
2
Copyright 0 1967 American Society for Microbiology Printed in U.S.A.
Of the large amount of funds spent each year in this country on construction and
remodeling of biomedical research facilities, a significant portion is directed to
The magnitude of the annual national invest- Service, Communicable Disease Center, 1600
ment in new biomedical laboratory facilities, Clifton Road, Atlanta, Ga. (Laboratory Design
coupled with the problems arising out of unsafe for Microbiological Safety-M-1091, 16 mm,
sound and color, approximately 35 min).
designs in these facilities, justifies increased atten-
tion to engineering design criteria to maximize The initial step that should be taken in the de-
microbiological safety. A number of recent sign process for a microbiological research labora-
papers, conferences, and seminars have dealt with tory is an analysis of the research activities to be
one or more aspects of microbiological laboratory undertaken, the hazards associated with the re-
planning and design (3, 15, 16, 20, 21). search and with each operation, and a functional
Incorporation of microbiological safety meas- evaluation of the relationships that will exist
ures in the design of biomedical laboratory facili- between each activity. This analysis should enable
ties is needed for one or more of the following the laboratory director and the architect or en-
reasons: (i) to prevent the uncontrolled escape of gineer to estimate the extent of the hazardous
infectious materials from the building to safe- operations and to concentrate and minimize the
guard the health of the surrounding community; amount of containment equipment required,
(ii) to assist in the prevention of accidentally thereby realizing economic savings.
acquired infections among building personnel; Determining what safety measures to in-
(iii) to prevent the unintentional spread of corporate in the design of infectious-disease
diseases among animals by animal-to-animal or laboratories has required much research and
man-to-animal transfer; and (iv) to prevent false study. For instance, it was necessary to under-
laboratory results due to cross-contamination of stand how laboratory workers become infected,
microbiological cultures. how microorganisms might escape and spread
The purpose of this article is to describe and within a building or escape to the surrounding
illustrate some of the principal building features community, how animal cross-infection and cul-
and devices used to provide effective microbial ture cross-contamination occurs, and other simi-
containment for accomplishing the above aims. lar problems (6, 10, 12). From the results of a
The article is a corollary to a movie with the same number of laboratory hazards studies (1, 9, 17,
title that has been made by the Public Health 18), two concepts emerged that have proved suc-
Service Audiovisual Facility and sponsored by the cessful in designing biologically safe laboratories.
National Cancer Institute. The film may be bor- The first is the concept of primary and secondary
rowed free of charge from the Public Health barriers for the laboratory containment of infec-
378
VOL. 15, 1967 LABORATORY DESIGN FOR MICROBIOLOGICAL SAFETY 379
woter bottle,
FIG. 1. Safety cabinet (upper left); ventilated animal cage (upper right); safety centrifuge cup (lower left);
safety blendor bowl (lower right).
tious materials, and the second concept provides The secondary barriers in a laboratory are the
the designer a logical division of major functional features of the building that surround the primary
zones within a typical laboratory building. barriers. These provide a separation between in-
Primary-secondary barrier concept. Enclosures, fectious areas in the building and the outside
barriers, or other containment devices that im- community and between individual infectious
mediately surround the infectious or potentially areas within the same building. Examples of sec-
infectious material are designated as primary ondary barriers are (i) floors, walls, and ceilings,
barriers. These are the first line of defense (other (ii) ultraviolet (UV) air locks and door barriers,
than the test tubes, flasks, etc.) for preventing (iii) personnel change rooms and showers, (iv)
escape and possible spread of infectious micro- differential pressures between areas within the
organisms. Examples of primary barriers are building, (v) provisions for filtering or decontam-
ventilated microbiological cabinets, closed venti- inating potentially contaminated exhaust air,
lated animal cages, closed centrifuge cups, and and (vi) provisions for treatment of potentially
safety blender bowls (Fig. 1). contaminated liquid wastes. These and other sec-
PHILLIPS AND RUNKLE APPL. M1CROBIOL.
Clean Office
reception area
the infectious area. Typically, this may include a large through-the-wall autoclaves that are also
small through-the-wall ethylene oxide gas cham- operable with mixtures of ethylene oxide gas. The
ber for the cold sterilization of heat-sensitive ma- use of small viewing windows and speaking dia-
terials (8) and a UV apparatus for decon- phrams facilitates communication and operation
taminating sheets of paper passed out of the in- in the front and rear transitional rooms.
fectious area (13), as illustrated in Fig. 5. Laboratory research zone. The laboratory re-
Transitional rooms at the rear of the laboratory search zone (Fig. 7) contains laboratories for in-
are needed for receiving laboratory and animal fectious microbiological operations, exclusive of
room equipment and supplies and for removing animal work. This zone is separated at least by a
equipment, trash, and other items from the in- corridor from the zone where infected animals are
fectious areas. A typical arrangement (Fig. 6) at used. In addition to laboratory rooms, this zone
be resistant to flowing steam and to the disinfec- racks (Fig. 11). In some instances it may be de-
tants used in the decontamination process and sirable to locate aerosol exposure equipment, such
frequent washings. Walls, wall curbings, and as the Henderson apparatus, in a room adjoining
ceilings should be free of cracks, and the coatings the animal room.
flexible enough to span minor shifts in the struc- If not available elsewhere, the animal area
tural system. A monolithic covering is often used should have an incinerator for disposing of animal
on the floors. carcasses, and a large autoclave for sterilizing
(v) Casework and other installed equipment, cages and passing them into a cage-washing room.
when possible, should be sealed to floors and walls In designing this zone, the type and degree of
to limit possible spread of contamination. Equip- animal isolation should receive early considera-
may include rooms for washing and sterilizing tion of animals before they are passed into the
glassware and animal cages, preparing culture infectious area for use. Careful attention must be
media, storing equipment, glassware, and animal given to the design of the ventilation system for
cages, and repairing various laboratory items. In this zone because of the many heat-generating and
some instances, the support zone may contain odor-producing procedures which are carried out
animal rooms for the quarantine and acclimatiza- in the washing area. Also, because of the large
overhead monorail
1
room
is interrupted. Although it may not be possible to and the liquid is sterilized by adding steam and
provide a generator large enough to supply full holding for a period time. Usually, a second tank
electrical requirements, the standby current is automatically put into service at this time. All
should at least be sufficient for ventilated animal piping to the tank should have welded joints to
cages, ventilated cabinets, deep freezes, refrigera- assure no possibility of leakage. A concrete curb
tors, incubators, and emergency lighting. The should be provided to contain the liquid in the
standby units may be mounted in trailers to pro- event of a rupture in the system. The necessity for
vide easy portability, or incorporated in the en- microbiological monitoring of the effluent from
gineering support zone. the system should be considered in the design
In some laboratories, facilities must be pro- process, to ensure that adequate valves, sampling
vided for treating contaminated liquid wastes. ports, etc., are incorporated in the design for re-