BU Biolab

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kx1000ps, you are almost single handedly making the board lately. Good man.

I thought all that glass was going to be part of the exterior wall, but I think its just going to added on, like a rain screen. Makes sense when you consider the security requirements I guess.
 
NU BioLab South End

The building is nearing completion and looks nothing like the original drawing. The building is devoid of the glass facade in the drawing and has been replaced with pre-fab concrete panels. The windows that do exist are small and narrow. I suppose with all the NIMBY groups and heated debates over this structure in a densely populated neighborhood influenced the final design to project a more solid, bank-like looking building. Now the building projects itself as something of a fortress. I personally think it looks better than the original design. I think with landscaping it should be quite nice, I'm speaking only on the aesthetics of this project. However, as I live in the South End it does concern me that God forbid, some poor lab technician accidentally become infected with the plague or some other deadly virus with no known cure, get on the subway to go home ... Well, you can connect the dots. It is scary.
 
Re: NU BioLab South End

Meadowhawk said:
The building is nearing completion and looks nothing like the original drawing. The building is devoid of the glass facade in the drawing and has been replaced with pre-fab concrete panels. The windows that do exist are small and narrow. I suppose with all the NIMBY groups and heated debates over this structure in a densely populated neighborhood influenced the final design to project a more solid, bank-like looking building. Now the building projects itself as something of a fortress. I personally think it looks better than the original design. I think with landscaping it should be quite nice, I'm speaking only on the aesthetics of this project. However, as I live in the South End it does concern me that God forbid, some poor lab technician accidentally become infected with the plague or some other deadly virus with no known cure, get on the subway to go home ... Well, you can connect the dots. It is scary.
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i think that that view is of the back of the building (w/o windows and precast)

**EDIT** no, that's the front alright.
 
What are the chances the SJC says no biolab and BU turns this into a luxury dorm?
 
Re: NU BioLab South End

Meadowhawk said:
However, as I live in the South End it does concern me that God forbid, some poor lab technician accidentally become infected with the plague or some other deadly virus with no known cure, get on the subway to go home ... Well, you can connect the dots. It is scary.
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Don't worry, the plague is caused by a bacterium and is easily curable, Besides, if a bug does get out, physical proximity won't make much of a difference.

justin
 
However, as I live in the South End it does concern me that God forbid, some poor lab technician accidentally become infected with the plague or some other deadly virus with no known cure, get on the subway to go home ... Well, you can connect the dots.
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Thankfully, given the location, said technician would most likely be taking the Silver Line, which is about a good a viral delivery system as it is a legitimate rapid transit appendage.
 
tocoto said:
What are the chances the SJC says no biolab and BU turns this into a luxury dorm?
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A more likely scenario is that BU would re-purpose the space to other scientific purposes, either for their own use, or for lease (or resale) to other life-science institutions (or corporate entities).

cscz said:
Thankfully, given the location, said technician would most likely be taking the Silver Line, which is about a good a viral delivery system as it is a legitimate rapid transit appendage.
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An astute observation. Classic!
 
And, what about comets crashing into the building?

Whether or not the biolab should be built in the South End is a good question.

Unfortunately, the points of view of relatively-normal people are being lost due to complete nutjobs taking control of the conversation.

BioLab officials peppered with questions about safety

By Susan Ryan-Vollmar, South End News

An educational forum focused on the security of the BioSafety Level 4 laboratory (BioLab) currently being built on Albany Street drew, at its peak, about 35 people, including state Rep. Gloria Fox, to the Cathedral High School gym July 9.

Area residents peppered representatives from Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) with questions about how BioLab employees would deal with scenarios ranging from an airplane crashing into the building, to the simultaneous infection of all 660 employees at the lab, to two doctors teaming up to pull off a terrorist plot (a scenario that the questioner, South End resident Richard Webman, acknowledged didn?t occur to him until the news last week that London doctors were arrested as suspects in an attempt to detonate car bombs in London and Glasgow).

But it was Fox?s assertion that the BioLab is being built over a water-filled tunnel that provoked the most heated questions. Noting that the building was being built over the Roxbury culvert (BUMC officials later clarified that the culvert is approximately 85 feet away from the building itself, but within the security perimeter of the facility), Fox said, ?This is very, very, very frightening.?

David Mundel, a South End resident who has been a vocal critic of the decision to build the lab in the South End, expressed astonishment that the culvert ran within the security perimeter of the BioLab. ?So if somebody went under there and it?s only four feet from [the security perimeter] and set off explosives ? are you telling me that there won?t be panic on the site so I can go in at will??

Kevin Tuohey, executive director for operations and public safety at BUMC, said he didn?t ?disagree? that there might be pandemonium on site in the event of a bomb going off inside the security perimeter, but he said that no one could get into the building without successfully passing an iris scan test.

Mundel countered by apologizing for airing the scenario publicly and then outlined a plot by which determined terrorists could get into the culvert now, as the building is being constructed and before the waterway has been secured, put explosives in place and then detonate them after the facility is operational. ?One could do this right now,? Mundel said.
?Possibly,? Tuohey replied.

Webman, visibly frustrated, exclaimed, ?There is no way you can say this facility is quote, unquote safe.?

The forum, titled ?Is the Building Safe?,? was sponsored by the Community Liaison Committee, the mission of which is to provide information to the public about the project and relay community concerns back to BUMC officials. It was the second of seven planned forums to be held through December and was moderated by committee chair Glen Berkowitz.

In their presentation before the forum was opened up for questions, David Flynn, an assistant vice president for facilities management of BUMC, said that the BioLab is being built in conformance with federal, state and local regulations. Independent quality control managers are on-site, he added, noting that the ?intensity of oversight? of the project is greater than anything he?s experienced in his career.

Flynn explained that ?all the critical systems in this building have redundancies.? For instance, there are four electrical feeds coming from Andrew Station, Flynn said. Even at the peak of energy requirements, which would come during a summer heat wave, Flynn said that the facility would not need to use more than two of those feeds. If all four feeds were to fail for some reason, he said, there were back up generators built onsite.

All of the mechanical, engineering, water and security systems in the building would be continually monitored, Flynn said. Any deviations from the norm would be noted immediately and investigated.

Dr. Ara Tohmassian, who joined BUMC after coming to the campus as part of the team investigating the 2004 tularemia outbreak in a Level 3 lab at the school, is in charge of quality control in the laboratories. He promised that there would be a ?very stringent routine quality control system? in place once the building is constructed. The quality controls would include independent, unannounced inspections of the labs; strict adherence to local, state and federal regulations regarding safety training and proper lab protocol.

Tohmassian also noted that the lab would be subject to approval from the Boston Public Health Commission before it can open. ?There is a public agency oversight that is critical for everyone to recognize,? he said.

In answer to Webman?s question of whether the facility could handle the simultaneous exposure of all 660 employees of the BioLab to an infectious agent, Tohmassian said, ?That doesn?t happen.?

Referencing the recent case of an attorney infected with an aggressive strain of tuberculosis who traveled internationally before receiving treatment, Tohmassian said the ?level of infection of those who came in close proximity of the man isn?t even close to the hundreds of people he came across.?

Dr. Jack Murphy, a Boston University microbiologist who will be a principal investigator at the lab, noted that a ?worst-case scenario? would see four to six people, at most, becoming infected.

There will be 26 labs with the area of the facility designed for Level 4 research with room for only four researchers, at most, in each lab. The research labs, Tohmassian noted, are a ?series of compartments within compartments so when an accident happens ? you?re talking about a very well defined [area].?

With prodding from Berkowitz, Tohmassian and Murphy clarified that the biohazard suits worn by researchers are hooked up to air hoses and that the pressure in the suits is designed so that the air flows away from the researcher. So if a suit were to rip, it would be hard for bio-hazardous material to reach a researcher?s skin. In addition, each of the 26 labs would be hooked up to separate air vents so cross contamination among the labs would be unlikely.

Webman wasn?t satisfied with the answer, however. ?You?re all assuming that those exposed will show immediate symptoms,? he said. ?You can?t guarantee that someone in your facility isn?t going to walk out and get on a trolley car? after becoming infected with a bio-hazardous agent.

Webman acknowledged the importance of and the critical need for the research that will take place at the lab to be done. ?But not in the heart of the South End,? he said.

Mundel and Richard Orareo of the Fenway, who has also been a vocal critic of the project, both reiterated their concerns about the siting of the BioLab in a dense, urban area.

Tuohey prefaced his response by noting, ?I know it?s not an answer I?ve been successful in giving before,? and then talked about the significant infrastructure needs of the project. ?When BU looked at other properties ? the infrastructure ? just wasn?t there,? he said.

Orareo noted, though, that infrastructure can be built anywhere. He noted that the infrastructure BUMC was relying on for the Albany Street project had to be built up. ?I think your explanation is convenient only for yourselves,? he said. ?I don?t accept your explanation.?

The next forum of the Community Liaison Committee, titled ?What Will Be Studied, What Are The Risks?,? will be held Aug. 6, at 7 p.m. in the Cathedral High School gym on Washington Street.

http://www.southendnews.com
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I don't think these concerns are crazy at all. If BU wanted to build a nuclear waste disposal site in the South End, and promised that all the dangerous material would be contained, there would be a public outcry.

Biology is seen as more controlled and pedestrian than nuclear physics, but the reality is that this stuff is probably more dangerous than what the U.S. Government has been forced to contain at Yucca Mountain, in the middle of the Nevada desert, over the loud protests of people who live many miles away.

The one-in-a-million chance that something goes wrong here could kill thousands upon thousands of people. These buildings need to exist but, infrastructure or not, it is incredibly irresponsible to put them here.
 
Interesting point about nuclear waste. That's another subject matter that has resulted in a great deal of fear mongering, like the BioLab. So it's a good point of comparison. That fact of the matter is that the federal government handles nuclear materials all the time and it does so safely. For example, very frequently the government has to transport warheads from point A to point B. Ever hear of such a shipment? Or an accident? They don't happen. Though if you ever find yourself in front of a white eighteen wheeler and being tailed by a couple suburbans with tinted windows, stay out of its way. Another point--the county of Los Alamos, New Mexico, is one of the ten wealthiest counties per capita in the country. New Mexico is poor state, but in Los Alamos, home of more nuclear facilities than any other place, you can't swing a cat without hitting a well-paid PhD scientist. Personally, I'd prefer that Boston be home to to a bunch of scientists specializing in infectious disease rather than some middle-of-nowhere town.
 
I never said anything has happened concerning nuclear waste, as nothing has. I do believe, however, that it is not fear mongering to be concerned about storing dangerous materials in a population center.

In fact, bio-hazards would be more dangerous than nuclear in dense areas, as people can spread them throughout the area. Nuclear waste only goes as far as the wind takes it.

I'm worried about the one mistake, and, as Three Mile Island demonstrated, that mistake can happen, even here in the ever-so-careful United States. Just because such a thing hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it never will, and the danger is great enough to exceed its hypothetical nature. We don't have to take this risk, and we shouldn't.
 
Perhaps people worried about these infectious organisms ought to live far away from any hospital.

On the master list of biological toxins:
Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxins
Clostridium botulinum neurotoxins
Aflatoxins and other fungal toxins
Saxitoxin
Ricin
I'm quite sure patients have been treated at a Boston hospital for all the above toxins, save perhaps Ricin.

List Source:
http://www.who.int/csr/delibepidemics/annex2.pdf

On the master list of biological agents:
Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)
Brucella abortus, Brucella suis and Brucella melitensis / Brucellosis
Burkholderia mallei
Burkholderia pseudomallei /Melioidosis
Francisella tularensis /Tularaemia
Yersinia pestis / Plague
Coxiella burnetii / Q Fever
Rickettsia prowazekii / Epidemic typhus
Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii / Coccidioidomycosis
Venezuelan equine encephalitis
Variola virus / Smallpox

Source:
http://www.who.int/csr/delibepidemics/annex3.pdf

I'm rather sure that patients have been treated at Boston hospitals for perhaps half or more of the above agents, and others, e.g. smallpox, in the very distant past. (The CDC, which possesses one of the two remaining stocks of smallpox, must maintain its stock at its laboratory in Atlanta, so no smallpox to Boston.) Stocks of anthrax were/are maintained at a number of university laboratories, and I suspect that it occasionally appeared in Boston when infected hides and skins were processed for the leather industry.

Another somewhat longer list of every organism that has been classified by some entity as a possible biological agent can be found at Table 1.1 in the document below. This longer list includes the organism that causes Eastern equine encephalomyelitis, for example, which is endemic to Massachusetts.

See:
http://web.mit.edu/ssp/bsl4/bioagents.html
 
The Globe said:
Federal health agency declares biolab no threat to South End

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

A federal health agency ruled this morning that a high-security research laboratory being built in Boston's bustling South End does not present a serious threat to the neighborhood's safety and that it would not have been safer if located in a less-congested area.

The decision from the National Institutes of Health removed another barrier to the 2008 opening of the Boston University lab, where scientists will be able to study the deadliest germs in the world, including Ebola, anthrax, and plague.

In September 2003, BU won a hard-fought competition to build one of two new Biosafety Level-4 labs that are cornerstones of the Bush administration's campaign to protect against acts of bioterrorism. The University of Texas at Galveston was the other recipient of an NIH grant to help underwrite construction of a Level-4 lab.

Community and conservation groups rallied -- staging protests, enlisting scientists, and suing in state and federal courts -- to block the Albany Street lab, which is costing $178 million to build. Opponents have charged that the lab places an undue burden on a neighborhood with a significant proportion of minority and low-income residents.

The NIH report released today is in response to a ruling in one of the lawsuits, which called for further assessment of the environmental consequences of the facility.

Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo compared what would happen if germs migrated from the lab into its South End neighborhood with what might happen if the lab had instead been built on more secluded property owned by BU in Tyngsborough or Peterborough, N.H.

The report concludes that even if an accident happened in the lab "under realistic conditions, infectious diseases would not occur in the communities as a result." The study also concludes that "there was no difference in simulated disease transmission among the urban, suburban, or rural communities."

One of the diseases evaluated, Rift Valley fever, might actually present more of a threat in the less-developed areas, the report says. That mosquito-borne disease could spread more easily in remote locations where such virus-carriers as livestock are more common.


Posted by Karen Weintraub at 09:48 AM
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Link
 
There are NIMBY's out there.

Judge's remarks irk BU biolab opponents

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | September 6, 2007

The state's top judge yesterday characterized the campaign to stop construction of a high-security research laboratory in Boston's South End as a not-in-my-backyard squabble, a potentially telling assessment in a high-stakes legal case.

Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Supreme Judicial Court made the remarks during arguments in a case filed by 10 Boston residents suing to block the Biosafety Level-4 laboratory from being built on Boston University's medical school campus. The lab, a cornerstone in the Bush administration's effort to combat bioterrorism, will give scientists the ability to work with the world's deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and anthrax.

A group of residents living near the lab has spent more than four years battling the facility, which is rising along Albany Street and expected to open in the fall 2008. The neighbors have argued that the lab's work will put their lives at risk and that BU and the National Institutes of Health, which is underwriting the facility's construction, unfairly located it in a densely populated area with many minority and low-income residents.

"It sounds in the context of this case rather like a NIMBY case," Marshall said, using the acronym for "not in my backyard." She said that it seemed inevitable that such a laboratory would have to be built near a medical research center, so that it would be accessible to infectious-disease scientists, technicians, and other health workers.

"Your honor, I strongly disagree," said Douglas Wilkins, the Anderson & Kreiger lawyer who is representing the residents. "My clients just want to be safe. . . . I don't accept the assumption that this has to be near a large medical area."

The case landed before the Supreme Judicial Court after the residents won a partial victory in August 2006 before a lower court judge. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Ralph D. Gants ordered further environmental review of the lab, declaring that a decision by the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs to approve the lab "was arbitrary and capricious." Gants, however, did not block construction of the $178 million building, which will house the Level-4 lab as well as other research facilities.

BU appealed Gants's ruling, and the Supreme Judicial Court decided to hear the case, bypassing an appeals court.

Klare Allen, a stalwart opponent of the lab, said after the hearing that she found Marshall's depiction of the case as a NIMBY dispute "very insulting. We've been very careful in saying we don't think this project should be built anywhere, period."

The lawyer for BU, John M. Stevens, told the judges there was no evidence from the operations of other Biosafety Level-4 labs in the United States that the BU facility will pose a danger to neighbors.

Only two of the court's six members, Marshall and Justice Robert J. Cordy, posed multiple questions to the lawyers during the oral arguments, which lasted 37 minutes. Their queries suggested they were mostly interested in technical aspects of the state's environmental review.

The Supreme Judicial Court did not indicate when it will rule.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/06/judges_remarks_irk_bu_biolab_opponents/
 
repost -- don't know waht happened to the previous

There are realistic NIMBY reasons such as noise from a nightclub or traffic from a shopping mall

On the other hand most of the NIMBYs are actually just opposed to change and progress

In the wost case -- they fear new technologies -- in that to most NIMBYs magic is more real than science

Thus we have irrational fears of cellphone basestation antennas in a church steeple, biological research facilities and other beneficial new technology

If they were really concerned about infections in their neighborhood they would close down the hospitals and daycare centers -- after all hospitals are where sick people congregate and spread the worst diseases and Daycare Centers and Kindergartens are the real perfect biolabs for breeding new strains of communicable diseases with lots of ideal incubators for the new strains ? and there is no containment ? they are open to the overall society!


By the way -- not to raise red flags but MIT has been operating a nuclear reactor on Albany Street just off Mass Ave in Cambridge for nearly 50 years

Westy
 
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