Handling of Infectious Agents

Abstract

SUMMARY Safe handling of infectious agents requires an early estimation of risk. In microbiological research, this is facilitated by knowledge of the number of laboratory infections, the human infectious dose, the incubation time prior to onset of symptoms, the extent to which an animal transmits disease to a normal cagemate, the excretion of the infectious agents in urine and feces, and whether the experiment may cause the infectious agents to be inoculated accidentally into the person conducting the experiment. Appropriate techniques and equipment safeguards can then be chosen, the most important being primary barriers that control the hazard at its point of origin. The 2 most important are the microbiological safety cabinet and some form of caging containment. In cancer research the application of safety measures is necessary but hampered by lack of knowledge of the magnitude of risk. Because a major search is being made for human tumor viruses, minimal safety standards have been issued by the National Cancer Institute.