Empirical Research in Biosafety: Filling Key Data Gaps

Presented By: Rocco Casagrande, Ph.D.,

Executive Chairman, Gryphon Scientific

In this session, we will present data from our empirical work in biosafety and our work exploiting existing data sets to inform biosafety. We will discuss our methodological framework for studying aerosols generated by laboratory accidents, and present information on the aerosols produced by dropping microtiter plates and tissue culture flasks. Also in the physical sciences, we will present data on the rate that conical centrifuge tubes leak and the frequency that splashes occur when opening microcentrifuge tubes via various opening methods. We will discuss the rate of spills and splashes when pipetting as drawn from experiments using volunteers and blinded samples in clinical laboratories. Interestingly, this experiment also sheds light on the ability of the researcher to know when they are making mistakes and take corrective action. We will present data on the rate at which needle sticks can be expected in the laboratory. We will examine how biosafety findings are distributed amongst laboratories in several institutions and what can be learned about the culture of biosafety. We will discuss how knowledge of the frequency and causes of accidents can lead to means to improve reproducibility in the life sciences.