BiosafetySafety concerns dog new Level 4 Biolab being built in the middle of Tornado Alley

The new Department of Homeland Security’s(DHS) animal pathogen-research facility, a Level 4 Biolab being built in Manhattan, Kansas and aiming to replace the aging New York’s Plum Island lab, is situated in the middle of Tornado Alley, leading researchers and security experts to question the wisdom of the decision to build it there. Why place a lab in which research is conducted on pathogens for which no cure or treatment has yet been found – fir example, foot-and-mouth disease – not only in an area known for being routinely hit by powerful tornadoes, but also in the middle of a region where most U.S. cattle is being raised?

As Laura Kahn, a Science and Global Studies researcher at Princeton University, writes for Slate, the move could have disastrous consequences given the new location.

The $1.25 billion project, known as the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), is to be constructed on the Kansas State University campus in Manhattan, Kansas and is planned to be operational by 2022. It will include a Biosafety Level 4 lab, which is designed to handle the deadliest and most exotic pathogens that exist — with no known treatments or vaccines.

The location and infrastructure of the Kansas facility will be more susceptible to damage from a natural disaster. Now operating as the Foreign Animal Disease Research Center on Plum Island, New York, the lab is to be moved from its significantly safer New York location to the Kansas campus.

“There was a reason the federal government placed the 840-acre lab where it did,” Kahn writes. “The isolated island sits off of the far eastern end of New York State’s Long Island, where the prevailing winds blow toward the ocean. If the foot-and-mouth virus — or any other airborne danger — escaped, the air currents would likely carry it beyond where it could cause harm. An out-of-the-way location makes sense because no lab is risk free.”

While developers and planners in Kansas are excited about the investment and jobs that the lab will bring to the region, many farmers and ranchers are concerned. In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences conducted an independent risk-assessment of the proposal and concluded that there was a 70 percent probability that an outbreak could occur over the course of the 50-year predicted lifespan of the laboratory.

Further, Kahn argues, no lab should ever be considered risk-free, and adding the danger of tornado damage to a facility that already faces the normal range of risks is not logical.

“In addition, the academy found that Homeland Security had not adequately addressed plans for lab personnel training, sufficiently considered input from local stakeholders, or made the kind of long-term funding commitment needed to maintain high-quality operations,” writes Kahn. “The 2012 evaluation concluded that Homeland Security’s lab proposal was ‘technically inadequate in critical aspects.”

Leaving natural disaster aside, just the extent of human error, according to Kahn, had marred the records of similar laboratories and is well documented.

“Even the best laboratories make mistakes,” she writes. “In July 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed mishaps involving exposure of personnel to anthrax and the transfer of a flu strain. Just this month, U.S. defense officials revealed that an Army lab mistakenly sent live samples of anthrax to at least 52 labs in 18 states and three countries. Meanwhile, a new USA Today investigation into high-containment laboratories (those at Biosafety Levels 3 and 4) found hundreds of incidents in recent years that could have put public health at risk. There is virtually no oversight of the labs that the newspaper looked into — which are operated by private companies, universities, and government agencies — and state health departments typically do not know where they are or what they do, even though the state health departments would be responsible for the response in the event of a lab breach. I first wrote about this problem more than a decade ago, and sadly, not much has changed.”

The groundbreaking for the lab took place last month, so Kahn admits that there is little that can be done now except hope that no natural disaster, human error, or intentional plot would disrupt the normal operations of the facility.

If something bad does happen, “we would have no one to blame but ourselves,” she concludes.