Guidelines for Biosafety in Teaching Laboratories Version 2.0: A Revised and Updated Manual for 2019.

The original Guidelines for Biosafety in Teaching Laboratories were developed in 2012 in response to an outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that originated from clinical and teaching microbiology laboratories. In the 7 years since the publication of the guidelines, there have been two subsequent CDC-reported Salmonella outbreaks originating from clinical and teaching microbiology laboratories. Use of and issues with the guidelines by ASM members have been tracked by various means since publication, and in 2018 it became apparent that an update of the guidelines was necessary. The Education Board of the American Society for Microbiology charged this task force with updating the guidelines based on the accumulated information. While the guidelines should look familiar, users will find that the originally separate BSL1 and BSL2 guidelines have been rolled into one document, to help eliminate redundancy and confusion. In addition, sections on risk assessment and service animals in the teaching laboratory have been added. These updated guidelines should help clarify many of the issues for which users expressed problems with the original guidelines. ©2019 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology.

INTRODUCTION

In 2012, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) published Guidelines for Biosafety in Teaching Laboratories (1) for its membership to use as best laboratory biosafety practices. These biosafety guidelines for teaching laboratories were developed in response to a multistate outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium that originated from clinical and teaching laboratories (2). Since that original outbreak in 2010–11, the CDC published reports in 2014 (3) and 2017 (4) of two other outbreaks of the same Salmonella strain originating from teaching laboratories. These subsequent outbreaks appeared after the ASM Biosafety Guidelines were published. To determine whether proper safety protocols were being used, the infected individuals from these later outbreaks were surveyed. Results indicated that some of the infected individuals reported that they did not remember doing the following: being trained at the biosafety level 2 (BSL2) level, wearing lab coats, having to leave their writing utensil in the laboratory, having to wash their hands before leaving the lab, and having a designated lab notebook that was not used for other classes. In addition, some stated that they used the BSL2 organism in introductory biology labs. All of these issues go against the best practices put forward in the ASM biosafety guidelines.

For the past 6 years, there has been a biosafety editor for the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education (JMBE). Every article that proposed laboratory work with microorganisms was reviewed initially by the biosafety editor and then sent to a safety committee member if further review and comments were necessary. This unique editorial position permitted a glimpse into how the membership was using the guidelines, as they proposed and reported on these experiments. It became clear from working with authors that some of the wording in the guidelines needed further clarification and other aspects of the guidelines needed stronger emphasis. In 2016 and 2018 Jeffrey Byrd presented sessions at the American Society for Microbiology Conference for Undergraduate Educators (ASMCUE) on the biosafety guidelines. At both meetings, the subsequent conversations were spirited regarding use of the guidelines. Items that came up repeatedly during those conversations were the need to eliminate redundancy, to seamlessly integrate both BSL1 and BSL2 guidelines, to help instructors with risk assessment of their lab exercises, and to provide guidelines for students with service animals.

During the 2018 ASMCUE it became evident that it was time to revisit the guidelines and revise them for the membership. Jeffrey Byrd was appointed chair of this Task Committee. Other members of the Task Committee included Elizabeth Emmert (Salisbury University, chair of the first Task Committee), Robert Maxwell (Georgia State University), and Heather Townsend (Community College of Rhode Island). During the 2018–19 academic year the committee assessed the changes necessary and developed a draft version of the revised guidelines. The draft version was presented to the membership at the 2019 ASMCUE in both a dedicated session (35 attendees) and a drop-in session (25 additional attendees). Attendees at both sessions were encouraged to discuss and comment on the guidelines. All comments on the draft guidelines from these two sessions were taken into consideration, and the draft was revised and finalized.

Users of the original guidelines should find that the new guidelines (https://www.asm.org/Guideline/ASM-Guidelines-for-Biosafety-in-Teaching-Laborator) have a familiar appearance. All six of the original sections were retained: Personal Protection Requirements, Laboratory Physical Space Requirements, Stock Culture Requirements, Standard Lab Practices, Training Practices, and Document Practices. Each of those sections was updated and clarified. To eliminate redundancy, the BSL1 and BSL2 guidelines, which were separated in the original document, are now itemized within each of the six sections. Therefore, when examining the Personal Protection Requirements for a lab, both the BSL1 and BSL2 guidelines are consecutive in that section so readers will understand exactly what is expected for each BSL level. Additionally, the Appendix to the guidelines is now repeatedly referred to within the guidelines to encourage users to consult this valuable, and previously overlooked, resource.

Risk Assessment is a new section in the revised guidelines. It was added because of the confusion exhibited by instructors in determining the proper biosafety level for their experiments, as monitored by JMBE submissions. Instructors need to assess the risk of each lab exercise they run and not just the course as a whole. Each protocol has its own inherent risks, and training of students for each lab should be based on the risk assessment of the protocols being used that week. Students are novices, and, as instructors, we cannot assume students will directly apply their previous training to situations that incorporate new techniques. That said, when a new technique is planned to be used at the BSL2 level, training on that technique should take place at the BSL1 level first, using an organism that can be safely handled at the BSL1 level. Proper training is stressed in the revised guidelines. To ensure safety, instructors must also make sure that they know the exact culture they are working with. The revised guidelines strengthen the directive that all cultures used must be from authorized commercial sources. In addition, there should be clear provenance (clear chain of ownership) of the cultures, and the instructor should have a well curated culture collection including documentation of the sources of all cultures.

A major addition to the document is a section providing guidelines for determining the admittance of service animals to a microbiology teaching lab. These guidelines are a starting point for an instructor and the campus ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance officer to determine reasonable accommodations for each student with a service animal. A conversation between the instructor, the student handler, and the campus ADA compliance officer should then take place to lay out the safety expectations of the student handler and service animal while in the laboratory. Once safety expectations are agreed upon, all parties should signify that they agree with the safety expectations, including what would lead to removal of the animal from the laboratory should the safety expectations be breeched. These revised guidelines only propose guidelines for service animals as defined by Title II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, not for emotional support animals.

The safety committee for JMBE has received numerous articles proposing the use of microbes outside of the undergraduate teaching laboratory, where institutional oversight is not apparent. It should be noted that these guidelines were designed for teaching laboratories where there is institutional oversight for safety. We encourage all K–12 instructors to partner with a trained microbiologist from an undergraduate institution to help assess the risk of using microbes in their pre-baccalaureate laboratories. Risk assessment for settings outside of a laboratory must be undertaken individually, as these biosafety guidelines assume that the experimentation is taking place within a laboratory. A setting outside of the laboratory increases the risk of working with microbes, since many more variables will be encountered and each setting is unique.

Cavalier attitudes toward safety when working with microorganisms in a teaching laboratory can result in the release of microbes (2), and instructors must lead the way in modeling appropriate safety practices for working with microorganisms. While these guidelines cannot guarantee that a microbe will remain in a teaching laboratory, they are the best practices for protecting against a microbe leaving the lab. Instructors are responsible for vigilance in adherence to these guidelines and the proper safety training of students to create a culture of safety in the laboratory. When a culture of safety is evident in a lab and regularly promoted by an instructor, compliance rates increase and the risk of microbes leaving the lab decreases.

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