|
The NIH Guidelines include a "Classification
of Human Etiologic Agents on the Basis of Hazard" (Appendix
B) which should be used to
help determine the level of containment required for a given organism.
The containment level required may be equivalent to the Risk Group
classification of the agent. Factors to be considered in determining
the level of containment include factors such as: agent virulence,
pathogenicity, infectious dose, environmental stability, route of
spread, communicability, operations, quantity, and availability
of vaccine treatment, and gene product effects such as toxicity,
physiological activity, and allergenicity. Note that work with fresh
human blood, body fluid, or tissue, and with human and other primate
cells requires Biosafety Level 2 (BL2) containment.
NIH Guidelines
Appendix B- Table 1. Basis for the Classification of Biohazardous
Agents by Risk Group (RG)
| Risk Group 1 (RG1) |
Agents that are not associated with disease
in healthy adult humans |
| Risk Group 1 (RG2) |
Agents that are associated with human
disease which is rarely serious and for which preventive or
therapeutic interventions are often available |
| Risk Group 1 (RG3) |
Agents that are associated with serious
or lethal human disease for which preventive or therapeutic
interventions may be available (high individual risk but low
community risk) |
| Risk Group 1 (RG4) |
Agents that are likely to cause serious
or lethal human disease for which preventive or therapeutic
interventions are not usually available (high individual risk
and high community risk) |
Appendix
G of the NIH Guidelines specifies
physical containment for standard laboratory experiments and defines
Biosafety Level 1 through Biosafety Level 4. Appendix
Q specifies containment conditions
for rDNA research involving animals.
|
