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...'"

Comments

BSL-4 labs

[BWJones]

Ahhhh, long walk on the beach of Plum Island watching the birds. (all kidding aside, seriously, it is good bird watching there). But, it should be noted that Plum Island is only one of several BSL-4 labs around the country that are publicly acknowledged. Others are located at UC Davis (proposed back in 2000 at least), UTMB in Galviston Texas, One propsed for Boston University, there are two just outside Washington D.C., there is one in Atlanta at the CDC and one in San Antonio. I believe we also have a BSL-4 lab out at dugway proving grounds in Utah as well.

So, one should know that these facilities are the absolute best place to do research with the kinds of pathogens and chemicals and folks should not be scared at the mere presence of these facilities because of the work they do to help understand disease and potentially, biological weapons that may be used against us. However, we should know about their presence, and we should have contingency plans in place for the surrounding population (aside from "sanitation") should we have problems at these facilities.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[DjMd]

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)....

Re:BSL-4 labs

[aschneid]

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.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Anonymous Coward]

My father is managing the construction of a new BSL-4 lab in Iowa. The test procedure involves compressing the room to some ridiculous pressure and then making sure it holds it for 48 hours or so. That means every outlet, every electrical conduit, every pipe, etc. must be epoxy sealed. Apparently the CDC had a BSL-4 building that never passed the pressure tests. So all that money later and it just sits empty.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[demachina]

There are probably a wonderful thing when they are used to prevent epidemics and to develop countermeasures for biological attacks. Unfortunately there is always the chance that they are dual use, especially at places like Ft. Dietrick. If they are also being used to reengineer microorganisms to be more effective weapons then they aren't quite as noble as you paint them. The U.S. would like you to believe they stopped developement of bioweapons in 1969 but you would have to be an optimist to believe that is really the case since the U.S. consistently opposes any international effort to verify bioweapons labs are not being used for new weapons research.

Probably the most disturbing indictment of these facilities is that the Anthrax used in the attacks in the U.S. that followed 9/11 were traced back to the Ames strain of Anthrax which is American in origin and is used extensively at
USAMRID, Dugway, and Batelle among others. A full list is here:

http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm

The Anthrax attacks which have largely faded in to obscurity, unsolved, should be a source of deep concern to American's and the world. They might have been perpetrated by a roque wacko that had access to Anthrax in one of these facilities. Its pretty unlikely they were perpetrated by an Arab terrorist. They could have just as easily been a covert operation perpetrated by a misguided government agency designed to stoke fear of WMD's in the U.S. Coincidentally the Bush administration, right after this used the threat of WMD's as the rationale to attack Iraq though no significant WMD programs have been found there. They will, no doubt, continue to use WMD's as a rationale for preemptive warfare assuming they can get away with it after the bold faced lie the war in Iraq has proven to be.

WMD's are the perfect rationale for preemptive warfare. You can accuse any country of developing them and its impossible for the target country to prove they don't. Every nation in the world has dual use industrial equipment that can be redirected to chemical and biological weapons production and the Bush administration cynically uses this fact to suggest a target country is a danger because they have tanks thats could be used to ferment biological weapons, for example.

As much as the U.S. likes to get on the high horse about WMD's its still a fact that the U.S. has more of them than anyone and has used them in the past to kill large numbers of innocent civilians by nuking two cities in Japan full of civilians in particular.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Cloud 9]

Would you rather it was operational?

Re:BSL-4 labs

[canajin56]

Yes, and they are almost certain that this Anthrax came from Ft. Detrick, since that exact strain was used there, and some was missing. Additionally, one Lt. Col. Philip Zack was spotted by security cameras entering the facility after hours, and after he had been FIRED one year earlier for racially-motivated harassment against an Egyptian researched named Dr. Assaad. One day before the Anthrax attacks, the FBI was sent an anonymous letter warning that Dr. Assaad was a nutcase, and planning some sort of biological attack on the USA. They investigated him, but determined it was an attempt to frame him. But they NEVER investigated WHO was trying to frame him. Odds are it was the same person who initiated the attacks. (How else would he know?)

So what we have is somebody who was FIRED over his hatred of an Arab, who was spotted illegally entering a secure facility shortly before the Anthrax used in the attacks WENT MISSING, and they received a letter implicating this same Arab immediatly before the attacks began. Additionally, the letters sent with the anthrax were written so as to frame Arabs. However, forensic analysis revealed that the person who penned them writes in English, and was faking an Arabic "accent" on the penmanship (Or whatever it is called when your penmanship is affected by the script you first learned to write in) Also, the letters told the people to take antibiotics. Why would terrorists trying to kill somebody do all they can to help save them? A real terrorist wouldn't say it was Anthrax at all, let alone recommend a treatment. Some have said "Well penacillin wouldn't help, you need Cipero!" That is completely untrue. The people who make Cipero would like you to believe it is the only antibiotic that works, but it is not. There are many antibiotics that are effective. Penicillin is, and is FAR cheaper.

credible dope smokers?

[garcia]

I packed up the car, scored some weed, picked up my girlfriend and headed to the Jersey Shore, just to be on the safe side. Coincidence and stupidity will kill you just as dead as conspiracy and evil genius, if the wind is right, so we holed up in a motel in Ocean City and followed the story from there.

While I don't doubt for a second the "strangeness" of the entire operations there and the chance that there might be "leaks" coming from the island, how in the hell are OTHER people (I don't mind it so much) going to lend any credibility to a writer that says something as unnecessary as "I scored some weed" in what could have been a serious article?

Re:credible dope smokers?

[ajlitt]

Here's one

Re:credible dope smokers?

[Durindana]

Credibility aside, the writer's trying hard to emulate Hunter Thompson throughout this piece, and this part in particular is a direct allusion.

Fans of Thompson, the 'gonzo journalist' known for participating as heavily as possible in the stories he covered for various newspapers, magazines, and most recently Rolling Stone, will recognize the Jersey Shore as a place Thompson knew and loathed from a stint at a shitty newspaper there, soon after he left the Air Force in Florida and before he lit out for New York. I believe Thompson's story of how he fled town after taking out a local man's daughter and destroying the man's car is in his first volume of memoirs, The Proud Highway.

Phrases like "holed up," overuse of the word "evil," malaprop similes ("fire in a cardboard factory") and consistent reflections of the writer's own opinions and impressions - how much do you see "I" in "serious articles"? many journalists call it "going first-person," and it's virtually never done - are all Thompson touches. As are gratuitous drug references. I'm tickled by the Thompson channeling, actually, because emulating other writers' style is something Thompson himself was notorious for doing early in his career.

I personally don't think the writer's predilection to score weed has much relevance to his credibility, any more than a mainstream reporter's alcoholism might (working reporters know what I'm talking about). This writing style and drug references are meant to appeal to a particular, fringe, audience, that's all, a kind of ingratiation and location with his audience's values, whatever you think of them.

Go Duct Tape

[ePhil_One]

Is there no end to its miracle powers?

Scary..

[grub]

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?

Re:Scary..

[phurley]

According to the article :grin: they had three; however they failed due to either:

1. Poor maintance by "scab" workers
2. Sabotage by striking maintance works.

(not good either way), but it does answer your question.

Re:Scary..

[Fnkmaster]

A more useful question is why on earth is striking allowed at this kind of facility? I mean, I appreciate the right to collective bargaining and unionization, but that right has certain bounds in facilities of national security importance like this.

I think the public's right to safety from level 4 biohazard's trumps the right of facilities engineers at this place to strike, any day. Whoever let such a situation occur in the first place should be held personally responsible for any injuries or deaths caused by inadequate, incompetent maintenance at this place.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

[rafael_es_son]

Well, looks like Dr. Lecter won't get his vacation RSN.

phhhewwww

[DR SoB]

At first I was scared, but a little calculation shows me I'm at least 500 miles away here in Toronto, pheew. This stuff is completely insane, why do we need 802412904158132951249812 weapons that are all capable of destroying life on earth, I mean, isn't 1 enough???

Re:phhhewwww

[HeghmoH]

This is just ridiculous.

If you are lucky, then you can get one warhead to kill a city. It depends a lot on how large the warhead is and how large the city is, of course. According to http://www.world-gazetteer.com/st/statd.htm, the number of cities in the world of all sizes is roughly (I'm too lazy to go through and add all the numbers together, so this is an estimate) 50,000. At one point there were 50,000 total warheads in inventory, but there aren't now. This also ignores the fact that a nuclear strike on a city will not automatically kill everyone who lives there; lots and lots and lots of people will survive. Also, half of the population of the planet doesn't live in a city of any kind.

The above analysis also ignores the realities of any real nuclear war scenario. No matter who the countries involved are, they are not going to carefully target cities so as to eliminate the greatest amount of population possible. The primary targets in a nuclear war are the other guy's nuclear forces. This means missile fields, strategic air bases, missile submarine docks, possibly aircraft carriers. With the possible exception of docks, none of these are known for being located in populated areas. Secondary targets are the other guy's conventional forces. These are air, army, and navy bases of all kinds, radar stations, air defense installations, etc. Some of these are located in populated areas, some are not. Tertiary targets are the other guy's infrastructure: airports, rail yards, major commercial hubs, and so on. These are generally located in populated areas but the population is not the target. last, coming in at #4, is the other guy's population. If and when you get to this point, you have already lost, but the threat of taking out a hefty chunk of the other guy's population can be a good insurance policy against war, and of course the threat has to be real for it to work.

By the time you've had a good-sized nuclear exchange, you've destroyed a bunch of warheads before they were exploded (warheads in missiles, aircraft, and ships that were destroyed in the fighting before they could fire), and, from the point of view of wiping out humanity, wasted a lot more warheads on relatively unpopulated areas. A bunch of cities have died, either because they contained critical infrastructure or just because they were important collections of people, but large portions of the population of both sides remains alive. More of them will die from radiation poisoning (although many fewer than most people think), starvation due to destruction of transport or 'nuclear winter', or just plain civil disorder, but you'll still have a lot left. And this is just in the two countries who went at it and their assorted allies; in any conceivable war scenario, the majority of the world will simply sit it out and hope none of the shit falls on them.

Chemical weapons aren't much of a threat to the survival of the race. Chemical and nuclear weapons are essentially the same as far as killing people goes; they can both do a good job at it, but only if everybody is in the same place, and it's just not something that the militaries of the world are going to bother with. Not to mention that nobody is wasteful enough to load chemical weapons onto strategic delivery systems, so in any armageddon scenario, the chemical weapons simply don't come into play.

Now we come to biological weapons. This is the only wildcard, because they are self-replicating. However, germs that make good war weapons don't make good extermination weapons, In fact, germs don't really make good extermination weapons at all. Either they kill so fast that they burn out (black plague, ebola) or they kill so slowly that the victim still has time to live a fairly normal life and have kids before they die (AIDS). Biological weapons are useless for war unless they can kill quickly. This means that they simply cannot wipe out an entire population, because they will burn out. Especially in

Sounds Familiar

[bfg9000]

Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... a three-hour power outage... the air filtration systems are inoperable.. decontamination procedures break down... the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate... workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...

Plum Island, Raccoon City... either way, I'm duct taping my windows and kneeling under my desk as per the Umbrella Group's safety instructions.

Re:Yet another example ...

[BillFarber]

some of those dirty A-Rabs might just have a point about the U.S.

A statement like that kind of destroys all credibility of the author.

What are you worried about?

[burgburgburg]

It's not like it was a Level 5 research facility which would be one worse than a Level 4 research facil ...what do you mean the numbering stops at 4? There is no such thing as a Level 5 research facility? Oh, that's different. In that case, I think we should panic right about now.

Re:What are you worried about?

[meringuoid]

It's not like it was a Level 5 research facility which would be one worse than a Level 4 research facil ...what do you mean the numbering stops at 4?

Is this the Spinal Tap approach to biohazard classification?

Re:Not so bad?

[TGK]

Because of the infection rates on some of those bugs. BSL4 is terrifying stuff, it's like working with plutonium that can breed.

If I remember correctly, to be a BSL4 pathogen a bug must have a high lethality in humans, unresponsive to treatment and vaccine, and a high infection rate.

Aids, for example, is BSL3 (or is it 2?). Now, HIV if frightening stuff, and while treatment has come a long way recently, its still the stuff of nightmares.

BSL4 is the stuff of the kind of nightmares you get after watching a Hannibal Lecter marathon while dropping acid.

Personaly I'd be much happier of BSL4 labs had some sort of fail safe, such that if all proverbial hell broke loose the doors would just shut and seal, and if everyone inside died horribly, well... so be it.

Labor issues have plagued the facility...

[terraformer]

...for years. My parents still live on Long Island and I take the Orient point ferry (docks 100 yards from the Long Island depo servicing Plum Island) and for years there has been one union or another on strike there. You see them every time you take the ferry. The scary thing is that plum island used to be isolated but there are more and more people moving to the North Fork and that ferry is seeing a huge amount of growth these days with the casinos opening up in CT. Any mishap could be disastrous and be totally uncontainable due to the sheer numbers of people every which way on the ferry services through that area. Also, the ferry comes within a half mile of the island on a regular basis. I would imagine that is enough to put the passengers at risk and if any leak is not found immediately then when the passengers dock at CT or Orient they could be off and running infecting everyone else before it can be stopped.

Emergency systems

[plams]

The emergency brake (i.e. the handbrake) in trucks is usually kept open by compressed air. The compressed air is responsible for holding a spring back, so if the air is suddenly lost, for some reason, the spring will extend and brake the truck. (This is because the conventional brakes are powered by compressed air)

Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?

Re:Emergency systems

[StateOfTheUnion]

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.

What the hell is WRONG with you people?

[JabberWokky]

Has NOBODY read the links provided? This is a veterinary research facility run by the USDA (the people who make sure our cows and chickens are healthy). Everybody is talking about "how horrible America keeps biological weapons". The whole facility is toured routinely by research scientists. While there's the possibility of a "secret gub'mint bug lab" elsewhere, it ain't here. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is not a weapon research lab, there *are* backup generators (which didn't work), and it's not a video game.

Signal noise, people... Signal noise.

--
Evan

New Book about this "Lab 257"

[jayrtfm]

Michael Christopher Carroll's new book Lab 257 details the politics, lies and incompetence that surrounds the lab. While I haven't read the book yet, I did see him speak at B&N a few weeks ago when he kicked off the book tour. I was impressed by the thouroughness of his research (he had a few of the people who helped him there), getting the original documents from the National archives, comfirming stories by interviewing multiple witnesses, and speaking to the son of the man who started the lab.

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.

Plum Island is Biosafety Level FIVE.

[MarkusH]

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.

Re:Redundant power supply

[Dun Malg]

You don't, the lab has three backup generators, which were not running for unexplained reasons.

Only slightly unexplained, I'd say. Maintenance engineers go on strike and suddenly all three generators don't work? The striking engineers blame it on "bad maintenance" by scab workers, but it's quite difficult to accidentally disable a generator, much less three of them. They don't really require any maintenance, other than checking fuel levels and starting them up once a month. Anything beyond that is handled by contracted outside maintenance companies that specialize in generators and backup power systems. I smell sabotage by a filthy union bastard.

Level 3 is closer than you think

[ka9dgx]

Any decent hospital Emergency Room deals with Level 2 all the time (sharps, blood, etc), and will see Level 3 on a fairly regular basis (Tuberculosis, Encephalitis, etc).

--Mike--

Time for a Reagan-like solution?

[Chordonblue]

Remember PATCO? No? Well, not too many people do. They were the striking air traffic controller guys back in the 80's. Fired. Boom. Done.

Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.

I suggest they go the 'binding arbitration' route. If this is refused by the union, then it's time to start writing pink slips. This is too important.

just a thought on generators

[subjectstorm]

i work in a network control center.

while our function is important, it isn't "critical", in that, should we completely shut down, no one would actually die.

having said that, i should now like to point out that we have two procedures in place to ensure that we do not experience a power outage:

one is an enormous CAT generator that is tested every tuesday and thursday. the lights blink for a moment, that's all. regular tests of any back-up power system are certainly advisable.

the second is an enormous bank of batteries. the main function of this is as sort of a universal UPS, keeping the computers from going down while the generator gets up. granted, it won't last long, but it is SOMETHING.

they can blame anyone they want for the failure of the generators, but, barring outright sabotage immediately before the power outage, i'd say this entire fiasco is the result of piss poor testing procedures. one could have any number of back-up generators in reserve . . . but if they aren't tested ROUTINELY, this is the sort of crap that can and does happen.

Re:Yeh, and M$ is in on the SCO deal too!

[demachina]

I forgot to add the choice of targets for the Anthrax attacks is particularly intrigueing. As you recall it was two leading Democratic senators and several media outlets including NBC.

What would be accomplished by these particular targets? In the case of Democractic senators its extremely useful to insure Congress will vote your way when you come in later with claims Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger of using them aginst the U.S. and to insure Congress will vote lots of money for WMD research and defenses. Congress living with vivid recollection of its own Anthrax attack was much more likely to vote for war to defend the U.S. from this threat. It kind of explains why the Democrats rolled over when the time came to green light the Iraq war.

The same can be said for the media. They became much more sympathetic to the danger of WMD's than they would have been if they hadn't been attacked themselves.

An arguement could be made this was all "Good For America". Perhaps those in power were legitimately concerned about the danger of biowarfare attacks against the U.S. but felt they couldn't get the funding or priority placed on defenses unless they staged a little demo. Sure a few people died but in the national security establishment calculus that is a small price to pay to help protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.

Union Busters

[Detritus]

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.

Re:Not so bad?

[rbrinkman]

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

Ken Alibek(ov)

[Chitlenz]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385 334966/qid=1079632818/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-04375 66-8960154?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Biohazard was written by the head of the Russian bioweaponeering program in the 80s-90s. There are literally pictures of him standing with a bunch of scientists in places like Plum Island (i thiknk its actually in Arkansas at the Pine Bluff facility) during one of the many "goodwill" tours the USSR and the US had during treaty negotiations after the cold war.

This book is SCARY. Apparently, the chimera virus so easily discounted earlier in this post is very real, and was an attempt to mix ebola and smallpox and seal it in gelatinized capsules to make it airborne and able to survive the explosion of delivery by bombs. Why bother? Because their research was based on whatever was considered INCURABLE in the west. Several accidents in russian experiments are well documented, and show up in old news reports as "food poisoning" or other polically correct reasons for mass deaths in suburban areas. Apparently in one case, someone got drunk and forgot to put the air filters back on at an Anthrax plant and killed a bunch of folx.

2 points: someone noted that this is small scale research. This is incorrect, as Ken Alibek notes that weaponized germs have to be produced by the TON in order to keep the stockpile of arms fresh enough for maximum impact. Think about what a TON of ebola would do to anywhere. Second, where did all this shit go? He documents how at least one of the starving workers at a smallpox plant slipped out with a live vial (from a lvl4 facility) to try to sell it as a supplemental income. In lots of cases, noone knows where it all went.

The upside is that it mostly doesn't work as effectively as it's billed. Spraying an agent would probably only infect a small number of people, since delivery of a live virus is apparently a very hard thing to accomplish effectively.

-chitlenz