Fatal bacteriology labs: Where is OSHA to investigate safety?
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 11, 2010
Fatal bacteriology labs: Where is OSHA to investigate safety?
There are 232,000 employed in bio-technology labs in the US.
Scientists manipulating fatal micro-organisms to fight bacteriological, virus, and genetically modified cells “terrorist” attacks are succumbing to serious health hazards. Many scientists and personnel in these labs have died from handling E.Coli, plague, anthrax bacterium trying to find corresponding vaccines and anti-bodies.
A study related to virulent agents registered 1,500 serious cases between 1979-2004.
There is this Federal Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA), created in 1972 with vast power for enforcing safety in private workplaces, trying to set new standards and regulations for these emerging hazardous workplaces such as bacteriological labs. Government, Federal and States, institutions, military, and public university are outside the jurisdiction of OSHA though the main regulations are applied for the safety of employees and workers.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) deals mainly in the health and infectious diseases or hospitals, pharmaceutical, and medical institutions.
The job of OSHA is far-reaching but not funded proportionally to its responsibilities.
OSHA has only 2,000 inspectors to covering 7 million private enterprises employing 130 million workers.
Thus, 80,000 workplaces and factories are somehow inspected yearly. The “descent” of OSHA for inspection of targeted factories is mainly based on statistics. Rate of injuries, fatal accidents, and level of risks in certain categories of work trigger actions.
Companies that failed to keeping records of injuries or were lax in sending periodic statements will be harassed for months on and their administration and managers tied up in inquiries, responding to questions, and resolving unsafe practices.
Current director of OSHA, David Michaels, declared: “Security and safety of employed people (in labs that create live micro-organisms) should not be sacrificed at the altar of progress. The current standards are not sufficient for the safety of people working in an environment polluted with infectious agents.”
The standards are applicable to labs and factories manipulating chemical products. Thus, OSHA has launched a campaign of investigation and surveying the levels of risks of infectious agents. Suggestions and recommendations will be collected and appropriate standards promulgated on a consensus basis with barons of industries.
In the US, it is the flooding of the judicial system in cases levied against enterprises that gets institutions into high gears.
So far, Becky McCain (52 years) who worked as molecular biologist at Pfizer (at Groton and employing 3,500 individuals) confirmed that she was paralyzed by a genetically modified virus. The jury warded her $1.37 million because Pfizer fired McCain when she raised the unsafe and insecure working conditions in the company.
Since university and military labs do not fall within the OSHA register of injuries then, it is unknown how many cases similar to McCain is prevalent in the industry. The federal government and the military have been experimenting with biological warfare since the surrender of Japan in 1945.
The Japanese bacteriological team or Unit 731 of General Ishii has been incorporated in the US military. China and North Korea suffered again of bacteriological warfare by the US in 1950 after witnessing the Japanese warfare in 1944.
Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman relied on declassified archives in the US and China when they published “The biological warfare; 1998”
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