Who will conduct and approve the environmental studies for the Ricketts Laboratory?

An environmental assessment has been prepared by the Environmental Assessment Division at Argonne, which is noted internationally for its contributions to evaluating environmental situations and contributing to remediation. The assessment's conclusions will be verified and approved by NIH as the agency funding construction. DOE, which will have the facility on its property, will also approve the assessment as a cooperating agency. Construction will not go forward until the environmental assessment is completed in accordance with all acceptance criteria.

The analysis, which looks at all phases of the laboratory's impact on the surrounding area - including such concerns raised by Argonne's neighbors as health implications and impact on real estate values -- continues a process that began in conjunction with the initial design proposals. Since the RBL has been designed to meet stringent safety and environmental standards for a facility of this sort, it is expected that its construction and operation will have little or no impact on Argonne employees and its neighbors. The environmental assessment process is expected to take until late 2005.
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What form will building-specific security take?

Terrorist and other malevolent actions/threats are part of ongoing evaluations of all security interests at Argonne, and safety and security were guiding principles in the proposed design for the Ricketts Laboratory. Safeguards and security personnel have been a part of the protection planning process from the earliest stages of its development. This formal and detailed process is based on the best classified and unclassified intelligence available.

Protection strategies and equipment proposed for the Ricketts Laboratory meet or exceed established requirements, demonstrating the commitment of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory to the safety of employees and surrounding communities. Personnel working in the laboratory will be fully screened and thoroughly trained.

Security access control and CCTV will be provided at both the building perimeter and within the facility. A system will be provided for monitoring scientific equipment, including low-temperature freezers, environmental chambers, and autoclaves. There will also be an intercom system for communication with personnel in the BSL-3 laboratory, as well as a sound system for interfacing with the Argonne-wide public address system to allow emergency paging within the building. The Argonne emergency management process provides public address announcements to give early warnings of impending storms, allowing hazardous materials to be secured in an orderly manner.

The Argonne Office of Safeguards and Security maintains a uniformed protective force and has a central physical security office for continuous monitoring of access controls. Additional specific security measures for the building will be developed, however, Argonne does not publicly comment on these for obvious reasons.
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Will employees leaving the facility be inspected?  

Security at the Ricketts lab will be tight, and allow access only to authorized personnel. Argonne is a secure site, but even within the Ricketts lab, only those employees whose job duties require access to microbial agents and who have undergone rigorous training will be allowed access to the containment areas. In addition, because some of the research involves bio-threat agents, all employees with access to those areas are required by law to undergo an approval process by the United States Department of Justice. Security will be enforced on site by security guards who will survey the operations of the facility with assistance from closed circuit cameras.
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What arrangements are being made to ensure the safety of the Ricketts Laboratory?

Safety was a guiding principle in the design of the laboratory. The building will meet or exceed all International Building Code and National Fire Protections Association codes and applicable site standards. The building will also meet or exceed applicable local and state codes, all current NIH design and policy guidelines, all CDC and NIH biosafety requirements and applicable federal regulations governing the use of select agents.The building will be commissioned in accordance with the NIH Model Commissioning Guide and certification standards.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems will be designed in accordance with NIH design policies and guidelines, BMBL recommendations, and applicable codes and standards. The MEP systems are designed to achieve a reliable, flexible, and environmentally acceptable facility. Appropriate design concepts, such as high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration of exhaust air and plumbing vents, are incorporated to enhance biocontainment safety for occupants and the surrounding community. Ventilation systems serving laboratory and vivarium areas will be one-pass, 100% outdoor air systems. Exhaust air will be HEPA filtered and discharged at a height high enough above the roof level and at an outlet velocity fast enough to facilitate mixing with outside air, and the system will be located to avoid re-entry of exhaust air into the ventilation system intakes. All critical ventilation and utility systems will have redundancies to maintain continuous operation.

Multiple air handling units will serve the Ricketts Laboratory. Exhaust air from the laboratory will be filtered by independent HEPA filters at each space. Filter housing is designed to minimize the potential for contaminating downstream duct mains. All HEPA filter housing will include in-place test sections and isolation dampers. Duct branches to all BSL-3 spaces will be equipped to allow decontamination by vaporous hydrogen peroxide, if necessary. To exhaust the small amounts of low energy radioactivity that will be used at the Ricketts Lab, a radioisotope laboratory fume hood will be served by a separate exhaust system with two exhaust fans, with each fan sized individually for the total required airflow. The radioisotope exhaust system will be equipped with a filter housing consisting of prefilters, HEPA filters, and carbon filters.
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Is Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) equipped to monitor the facility?

 Construction and operation of the Ricketts lab will be continuously monitored by many government and local agencies, all of which have the authority to shut down operations should the Ricketts lab be found to be non-compliant. In a formal memorandum of understanding between the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy, OSHA has accepted authority to prescribe and enforce health and safety standards for Ricketts Lab employees.
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What are the protocols for keeping track of bio-agents while you have them?

Each transaction involving biohazardous material will be conducted in accordance with federally-established procedures for packaging, transports and inventory management. These procedures require the sender and receiver to communicate in a detailed fashion and countersign a shipping certificate. All personnel with access to biohazardous material must be authorized by the United States Department of Justice. Existing inventories must be checked in accordance with stringent federal regulations. The University of Chicago has already established a secure inventory management process that will be adapted for use at the Ricketts Laboratory. ANL experts will be available to provide the site's experience and expertise in inventory management of hazardous materials.
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How would biological materials be transported to the Ricketts Laboratory?

Standards for the packaging and safe transportation of biohazardous materials are well-established by the federal government and would be carefully observed. The Ricketts Laboratory will not accept shipments that do not meet these standards.

Packaging regulations require multiple levels of containment in sealed containers and the inclusion of safe absorbent material. Packaging standards were developed by the federal government in consideration of potential collisions, including typical stresses on packages transported by airplane and truck around the world. Explicit labeling on the outsides of packages declares all of the hazardous materials within.

Violating the standards for shipping, receipt and possession of biohazardous materials carries severe civil and criminal penalties.

Shipments will be transported by carriers that are approved by the United States Department of Justice and follow federally regulated guidelines for safety and security. Shipments received by the laboratory will be taken directly to the Ricketts Lab, and not to a central receiving facility at Argonne.
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What would be done with shipments that fell short of shipping standards? Would they be sent back or taken in and tested for hazardous content?

Shipments that do not meet standard shipping regulations will be quarantined for examination and investigation. If the package originated with a known supplier, but does not meet laboratory receipt standards, it will be returned provided its return transportation poses no risk to handlers. If the origin of the transportation is not clear, and/or there is any concern the package is hazardous, the shipment will be handled within the facility by the appropriate federal agencies. The facility will train employees in the procedures for responding to such situations.
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What if a carrier bringing in a package of biohazardous materials has an accident?

A release associated with a vehicular or mail-transport accident is extremely unlikely. First, the packaging of biohazardous materials is exceptionally secure (see next question.). Second, because the Ricketts Laboratory will be neither a production facility nor a facility for weapons research, the amounts of organisms that will be handled there will be small--equivalent to the milligram-or-smaller samples presently shipped to laboratories by hospitals and clinics all over the world. However, appropriate decontamination procedures for accidents involving biohazardous materials are well-documented and employees of the laboratory would be trained for any accident.
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How would materials be transported between the laboratory and other Argonne facilities, such as the APS and Biosciences?

Local transfers will be handled according to the same strict protocols governing outside transportation to the laboratory, though such building-to-building transportation normally would be non-infectious because organisms would be reduced to proteins and nucleic acid fragments for study.
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What quantities of research materials would be at the laboratory?

Research at the proposed Ricketts Laboratory will require only small amounts of organisms. Vials brought to the laboratory would be hand-sized, perhaps the dimensions of a small prescription medicine container, and contain milligram amounts of material (29,000 milligrams equal one ounce in weight). Small amounts of stock material would be used to grow only the bacteria or virus required for each study.
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