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Examining New York's Bioresearch Laboratory
Evangelion quotes from a NY Press story about Plum Island: "'Located just two miles off the tip of Long Island and six miles from the Connecticut coastline, Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... During the fifth month of [an Engineer's] strike, a three-hour power outage renewed public interest in the island... Without power, the air filtration systems are inoperable. Without power, decontamination procedures break down. Without power, the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate. According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...'"
We don't have level 4 labs where I work (levels 1-3 only), but we have emergency backup power that kicks in in under 10 seconds. Why on earth would this place not have that?
Trolling is a art,
You forgot Fort Detrick Right between Washington D.C. and Baltimore.
USAMRIID has over 10,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 4 (BL4) and 50,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3 (BL3)....
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
Here's one
He has done an audio interview on rense.com and onNPR (can't find the link)
What he describes sounds similar to the problems laid out by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
From a United Stataes Animal Health Association's 1998 Report:
Beyond the traditional four biosafety levels, U.S. Agriculture has an additional level, biosafety level 5 (BL5), designed for agents that by law are not allowed on the U.S. mainland. Both foot-and-mouth disease virus and rinderpest virus require that BL3-Ag facilities in which they are studied be separated from the mainland. There is only one facility in the U.S. that meets BL5 criteria -- the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
Original Report Here.
The proposal for the one at UC Davis was dropped due to public opinion. Although the federal government is still looking at building a new one. There were several proposed sites, and that list was narrowed down and UC Davis dropped from that list.
Part of the site determination that the government is doing for this new one is the surrounding area public opinion of the lab. UC Davis and the surrounding Sacramento and bay area had a very negative reaction to a BSL-4 lab being created. Therefore the government determined that it would not be a good idea to build it here.
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I.
Interesting actually. Einstein didn't. A common misconception amongst many religious groups in some desperate hope to hang onto some credibility in this age of reason and common sense, is that Einstein was religious, and believed in god.
While a Jew by descent, he had no religious beliefs of his own - in fact when this nonsense was brought to his attention he was indignant at the suggestion:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.". (From Albert Einstein, "The Human Side", ed. H. Dukas and B. Hoffman (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981).
Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?
We do that when designing safety systems in chemical plants and refineries . . . critical systems are designed to "fail open" or "fail closed" depending on the situation. By "fail", I mean if the system loses power (whether it be electric, pneumatic, etc.) For example, one would not want a fuel gas valve on a boiler to "fail open" and one would not want a chilled water quench system on that same boiler to "fail closed." Also, there are almost always manual block valves in the event of a more catastrophic failure.If the doors cited in the article fail open, it would imply that it is impossible/impractical to design a fail closed system for sealing the doors, triple redundant backup generators were considered sufficient to address the failure mode, or the engineer that designed the system should be sent to remedial engineering school.
Mother Jones has an interesting article that provides some background on the labor problems at Plum Island. It appears that the contractor, LB&B Associates, with USDA assistance, is trying to destroy the union.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
you forgot the bit about that Biosafety level 4 pathogens may be transmitted by the *cough* aerosol *cough* route. Within work areas of the facility, all activities are confined to Class III biological safety cabinets, or Class II biological safety cabinets used with one-piece positive pressure personnel suits ventilated by a life support system. The Biosafety Level 4 laboratory has special engineering and design features to prevent microorganisms from being disseminated into the environment. (Except power outages followed by sabotage of the generator apparently). Remember these are the nice things like Viral Hemorragic Fevers (the Ebolas of the world http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispage s/vhf.htm)
BSL1 - Biosafety Level 1; Organisms not known to cause disease in health adult humans. However, these agents may be opportunistic and cause disease in the young, aged, immunodeficient or immunosuppressed individuals.
BSL2 - Biosafety Level 2; Laboratory transmission occurs by self-inoculation or exposure via mucous membranes. Human blood, body fluids and cell lines are designated as Biosafety Level 2, unless they are known to contain a higher level pathogen. BSL2 organisms may cause diseases that may be lethal over time such as HIV. However, the BMBL lists BL2 organisms as being of moderate risk to personnel and the environment.
BSL3 - Biosafety Level 3 have the potential for respiratory transmission (inhalation of aerosols). BSL3 organisms may cause serious and potentially lethal infection.
BSL4 - Biosafety Level 4 is assigned to work involving dangerous or exotic agents which pose a high individual risk of life-threatening disease, which may be transmitted via the aerosol route, and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy
More info at http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/biosfty/bmbl4/bmbl4s3.ht m
Well, the campus is still trying to put one in and get a future site here. The public is a bit upset that they're still at it (and the campus is refusing to talk to the public self-appointed liason people). The uproar here after the last proposal round was rather strong. The campus can't convience the public that there is no reason for concern, as much as they try.
Ah, Davis politics. It's a fun place to live.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Here's a Terraserver view of the island. I don't see anything dangerous! Well, nothing bigger than 1 meter, anyway.