A general tenet among safety professionals is that potentially hazardous materials should be controlled at the source, or as close to the source as possible by engineering and/or administrative contols. Personal protective equipment is generally considered to serve as a secondary protection measure and should be introduced as a primary protection measure only when engineering controls are insufficient or temporarily unavailable. Accordingly, I would be leery of incorporating "BL3 gear" (I assume PAPR, or HEPA respiratory protection, etc) alone; particularly when addressing an agent clearly transmitted via aerosol such as mycobacterium. Second, although the room ventilation system may have been designed to draw air away from the BL3 cytometer operator, this probably isn't alone sufficient in protecting the operator considering that eddy currents and other quantitative ventilation issues must be addressed. To illustrate, place some dry ice in a container of water on the cytometer bench, then open and shut the lab door, or walk behind, or stand in various positions behind the cytometer. The visible currents tell a tale. The suggestion to position the sorter in a laminar flow hood is, in theory, a good approach; however this may be impractical. Along with standard BL3 precautions, if your sort sample collection drawer is under negative pressure (not so much to affect the sort stream) and enclosed during sorting, you're off to a good start. I would suspect that this feature, coupled with the secondary containment of a laminar flow hood, or a properly designed room ventilation system perhaps with the requirement of personal protective equipment (i.e. respiratory protection), should be more than sufficient to protect research personnel and satisfy your biosafety officer. Regards, Tom >>>To: Cytometry Mailing List <cytometry@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu> >just to let those who were interested know, i got a few responses on this >question. > >two individuals suggested that gowning up in complete BL3 gear was >sufficient, since the cytometer was not supposed to generate aerosols. >another said that her BL3 cytometer was located downstream of the airflow, >so that air moves away from the operator. > >i'd like to hear if from BD reps to see if any of their customers have >taken any extra precautions. please reply to the list as lots of people >seem to be interested!! > >thanks once again for the responses! > >barbara > >Barbara A. Butcher, Ph.D. >Senior Research Associate >Department of Microbiology and Immunology >C5-160 Veterinary Medical Center >Tower Road >Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine >Ithaca, NY 14853 >607 253-3270 > > > ******************************** R. Thomas Leonard, M.S.,CSP,CBSP Safety Officer The Wistar Institute 3601 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 tleonard@wistar.upenn.edu Ph:215-898-3712 Fx:215-898-3868 ********************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 10 2001 - 19:31:12 EST