Wiktionary
n. protection from potential harm from biological agents, such as infectious microbes or modified genes.
WordNet
n. safety from exposure to infectious agents
Wikipedia
Biosafety is the prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health. These prevention mechanisms include conduction of regular reviews of the biosafety in laboratory settings, as well as strict guidelines to follow. Biosafety is used to protect from harmful incidents. High security facilities are necessary when working with synthetic biology as there are possibilities of bioterrorism acts or release of harmful chemicals and or organisms into the environment. A complete understanding of experimental risks associated with synthetic biology is helping to enforce the knowledge and effectiveness of biosafety.
Biosafety is related to several fields:
- In ecology (referring to imported life forms from beyond ecoregion borders),
- In agriculture (reducing the risk of alien viral or transgenic genes, genetic engineering or prions such as BSE/"MadCow", reducing the risk of food bacterial contamination)
- In medicine (referring to organs or tissues from biological origin, or genetic therapy products, virus; levels of lab containment protocols measured as 1, 2, 3, 4 in rising order of danger),
- In chemistry (i.e., nitrates in water, PCB levels affecting fertility)
- In exobiology (i.e., NASA's policy for containing alien microbes that may exist on space samples. See planetary protection and interplanetary contamination), and
- In synthetic biology (referring to the risks associated with this type of lab practice)
The international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety deals primarily with the agricultural definition but many advocacy groups seek to expand it to include post-genetic threats: new molecules, artificial life forms, and even robots which may compete directly in the natural food chain.
Biosafety in agriculture, chemistry, medicine, exobiology and beyond will likely require application of the precautionary principle, and a new definition focused on the biological nature of the threatened organism rather than the nature of the threat.
When biological warfare or new, currently hypothetical, threats (i.e., robots, new artificial bacteria) are considered, biosafety precautions are generally not sufficient. The new field of biosecurity addresses these complex threats.
Biosafety level refers to the stringency of biocontainment precautions deemed necessary by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for laboratory work with infectious materials.
Typically, institutions that experiment with or create potentially harmful biological material will have a committee or board of supervisors that is in charge of the institution's biosafety. They create and monitor the biosafety standards that must be met by labs in order to prevent the accidental release of potentially destructive biological material.
Usage examples of "biosafety".
Since it had once been a biosafety level four facility, much of what we needed was already in place-at least in terms of isolation and security.
Kit noted fridges for storing samples, biosafety cabinets for handling hazardous materials, and a rack of rabbit cages under a clear plastic cover.
This approach will require close collaboration among researchers, their institutional biosafety officials and committees, and providers of these agents.
It was all so different from the way she remembered it, Lucy thought, as she and Monica pushed through the airlocked door and entered Biosafety Level Four.
She checked her spacesuit carefully for tears in the fabric, then suited up as usual and went through the various airlocks leading into Biosafety Level Four, plugging and unplugging and replugging her air hose.
There were usually two or three other scientists seated at the biosafety cabinets, large work areas closed on five of their six sides in order to contain any aerosols created in the experimentation process.
A few feet away, one final steel door, the entrance to Biosafety Level Four, separated him from his objective.
That is why they are researched only in labs that meet the most stringent biosafety standards, level 4.
Would you get a printout from the Office of Biosafety of all the people going in and out of the maximum containment lab for the last year?
The doctors remember the clinical signs, because no one who has seen the effects of a Biosafety Level 4 hot agent on a human being can ever forget them, but the effects pile up, one after the other, until they obliterate the person beneath them.
HIV is a highly lethal but not very infective Biosafety Level 2 agent.
Her specialty was turning out to be the effects Biosafety Level 4 hot agents, and in the presence of those kinds of agents you need to wear a space unit.
She walked along a Biosafety Level 0 corridor, heading for a Level 4 biocontainment area known as AA-5, or the Ebola suite.
When you begin working with biological agents, the Army starts you in Biosafety Level 2, and then you move up to Level 3.
Now he had to decide whether to allow her to go into Biosafety Level 4.