New Microbes, Toxins Discovered In NIH, FDA Lab Facilities

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Containers filled with several types of potentially deadly substances, including a nearly 100-year-old vial of the toxin ricin and samples of the pathogens that cause botulism and the plague, have reportedly been discovered at US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratories.
The substances were discovered as part of a search launched in response to the accidental discovery of smallpox at an NIH facility in Bethesda, Maryland earlier this summer, according to BBC News. In that incident, six freeze-dried and sealed vials of the disease were discovered, marking the first time that the unaccounted-for samples of the virus had been discovered in the US.
This latest incident took place at laboratories that the NIH said were permitted to use poisonous substances, but involved materials from historical collections that were allowed to be stored without adhering to any specific safety regulations. Officials told the BBC that the toxins had been improperly stored, but were in sealed containers. No employees were in any danger of being infected, and the samples have since been destroyed.
According to Washington Post reporters Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun, a total of five misplaced biological materials were discovered by NIH officials at the Bethesda campus over the past few weeks. Alfred Johnson, director of the agency’s office of research services, told the writers that the items were found in locations where they should not have been stored. Johnson’s office is in the midst of a “clean sweep” of NIH labs, Dennis and Sun added.
Three of the samples were found at the NIH Clinical Center’s Department of Medicine, which is home to thousands of microbial samples dating back to the 1950s, Johnson told the Washington Post. Those samples included two vials of the bacteria responsible for causing plague, as well as two vials of a rare bacterium that causes a tropical illness known as Melioidosis and three vials of the bacterium that causes a potentially fatal disease known as tularemia.
The NIH search, which took place between July 29 and August 27, also revealed a vial of ricin in a chemical lab, and two vials of the nerve toxin that causes the muscle-paralyzing disease botulism in a lab of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). While Johnson said that scientists are allowed to have individual quantities of this substance if they are below half a milligram, the total found in the two vials exceeded the limit.
In a memo, the NIH said that it “takes this matter very seriously,” and that “the finding of these agents highlights the need for constant vigilance in monitoring laboratory materials in compliance with federal regulations on biosafety,” according to The Telegraph.
In a separate but related incident, the FDA reported on Friday that it, too, had discovered an improperly stored pathogen – staphylococcus enterotoxin, which can cause food poisoning, in one of its laboratories, the UK newspaper reported. The vials were stored in a locked freezer, the agency said, but not in a lab registered to work with such agents. They were relocated to a registered facility where they were later destroyed.