Feds’ report says BU biolab safe for S. End

Dan Devine

In a report released last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concluded that a biocontainment laboratory being built by Boston University to study life-threatening diseases poses no threat to the safety of residents in the surrounding South End neighborhood.

The study attempted to address concerns raised by opponents to the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), commonly referred to as the “biolab,” in lawsuits filed last year.

Local activists have for some time alleged that locating the lab on Albany Street adjacent to Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) would unnecessarily place low-income and minority residents in the area at a serious health risk, and that BU and NIH moved ahead with the biolab project without considering potential alternative sites owned by the university.

In response to a judge’s decision calling for further review, NIH tapped researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo to develop computer models that would simulate the release of Ebola virus, Sabia virus, monkeypox virus and Rift Valley Fever (RVF) virus to predict who in each of three communities — the South End, Tyngsborough, Mass., and Peterborough, N.H. — would become infected, as well as where they would be infected, when they would be infected and what would happen.

The review aimed to answer three questions: what, if any, risks would be posed by an accident involving an infectious agent during the lab’s operation; whether locating the lab in an urban, suburban or rural setting would affect the transmission and spread of disease should such an accident take place; and whether the surrounding “environmental justice” — meaning “low-income and minority” — communities would be disproportionately affected by an accident as a result of having the biolab located nearby.

Results of the simulated scenarios, which exaggerated risks to force infections beyond the laboratory, showed that there was no difference in simulated disease transmission among the three communities for Ebola, monkeypox or Sabia virus; that the population size in each community did not affect the rate of transmission of the viruses; and that the South End communities near the proposed site were not disproportionately affected by the biolab’s presence on Albany Street.

In addition, the simulations indicated that the mosquito-borne RVF would not be sustained in Boston, but that livestock helped carry and spread the virus in Tyngsborough and Peterborough, “resulting in significant human disease and even death.”

“In fact,” the report states, “the nature of the communities surrounding Boston-BUMC (i.e., urban environment, lack of livestock virus carriers, etc.) places citizens of these communities at much less risk of RVF infection than persons living in Tyngsborough or Peterborough.”

A Boston University statement said the report “confirmed that the Albany Street location is the best and most appropriate site for the NEIDL and that its urban location is as safe or safer than less congested alternatives.”

The NIH report’s release is just the latest in a string of developments that have surrounded the hotly contested biolab issue over the past several years.

Back in 2003, NIH awarded BU a $128 million grant for the design and construction of a national biocontainment laboratory, which was to include biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) research space. BSL-4 facilities host research on diseases like influenza and “exotic agents that pose a high risk of life-threatening disease to the laboratory worker handling them and for which there are no vaccines or therapies,” according to the NIH report.

They are also “designed, constructed and operated to be the safest, most secure laboratories in the world,” the report says, noting that the U.S. has yet to see an infection resulting from work done in a BSL-4 lab “in hundreds of thousands of person-hours of work.”

In December 2005, NIH published a Final Environmental Impact Statement for the BU biolab, which the agency says “demonstrated that the construction and operation of the NEIDL did not pose a risk” to either the South End community where it will be located or any surrounding communities.
As it turned out, that statement was anything but final.

Lawyers representing area residents opposed to the lab’s construction filed a federal suit against NIH last May, alleging that the agency awarded BU the grant without conducting required risk assessment, environmental review or site analysis.

A decision rendered in a state suit last August by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Ralph D. Gants concurred, finding earlier environmental impact assessments inadequate and calling for additional environmental review of the proposed lab.

In his 36-page decision, Gants acknowledged that the lab has “the potential for extraordinary societal benefit,” but also “extraordinary risks to the environment and public health” if proper care is not taken.

BU appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which is scheduled to hear the case on Sept. 5.

Following Gants’ instructions, NIH and BU agreed to conduct a more detailed review of the biolab proposal that considered the Tyngsborough and Peterborough sites, as well as a wider range of worst-case scenarios, resulting in the report released last week.

Members of the community who remain unconvinced will have the opportunity to raise their concerns at a public meeting NIH has scheduled at Faneuil Hall on Sept. 20 to discuss the report.

In the meantime, construction continues on the biolab, which BU officials say is 70 percent complete. The facility is slated to open in 2008.