Newly released CDC documents raise concerns about lab safety
Recently disclosed documents raise new questions about safety procedures at CDC labs handling some of the world's deadliest pathogens, and about transparency within the agency.
The documents, obtained by USA Today, detail a 2009 incident involving the malfunctioning of a decontamination chamber at one of the world's most advanced biosafety level 4 labs -- the highest level of containment and security for work with lethal viruses like Ebola and smallpox.
Four scientists, encased in hazmat suits for protection, stepped into the chamber to begin the decontamination process. But they soon realized the shower of chemicals meant to kill anything on them did not work. Warning lights began flashing as the scientists needed to hold one of the chamber's doors shut as its gasket seal deflated.
The shower's back door into the infectious disease lab then "forcefully" opened several times as the scientists began an emergency chemical deluge. Air pressure alarms started blinking and the monitors displayed the lab as "red," the records state.
"The incident summary reads like a screenplay for a disaster movie," said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University biosafety expert who reviewed the report at USA Today's request.
What's more, the records also include emails that reveal some officials within the agency wanted to avoid reporting the incident to federal regulators, though they were eventually notified.
"Overall, the incident shows that failures -- even cascading, compounding, catastrophic failures of BSL-4 biocontainment labs occur," said Ebright, who has testified before Congress about CDC safety issues. "And the attempted cover-up within the CDC makes it clear that the CDC cannot be relied upon to police its own, much less other institutions."
The CDC has already faced two congressional hearings after a series of lab accidents in 2014. The first involved the mishandling of bird flu samples. In another incident, the agency reported as many as 84 scientists and staff members were possibly exposed to anthrax, although no one got sick. And in December 2014, an Ebola virus sample was sent to a lab not equipped to work with the deadly pathogen, potentially putting the technician handling it in serious danger.
When asked about the 2009 decontamination incident, CDC officials contend that there was never any real risk from the lab's equipment failures. The scientists called for help and engineers were deployed to manually operate the chemical shower. The failures were found to have stemmed from a software error in the lab's operating system, which was fixed the same day.
"Yes, there was some malfunction, but there was a clearly established protocol for how to deal with the malfunction and that was quickly and rapidly executed," Steve Monroe, who last fall was permanently appointed to head a new CDC lab safety office charged with improving the safety culture at the agency, told USA Today.
Even if work with deadly viruses had been going on in the lab, "the potential risk would have been exceedingly small," he said.
The newspaper also reported that a subset of the CDC's Fort Collins labs in Colorado were secretly suspended in recent years for safety violations while scientists were working with bioterrorism pathogens. The CDC kept this information even from Congress, though officials say it was "inadvertently omitted."
USA Today obtained the newly released documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which was submitted in June of 2012. The CDC took three and a half years to fulfill it.
All of the records released by the CDC in response to this request can be viewed on USA Today's website.