UC slapped with $450,000 fine over anthrax release

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 7, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The University of California has been fined $450,000 for the release of anthrax in September 2005 from a shipped package that was improperly packed by workers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which until earlier this week was managed by the university.

The fine, which came to light Friday during a congressional hearing on the safety and security of biodefense research laboratories, was levied Sept. 24 by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Though the Livermore incident did not result in any human exposure or injuries, it is the largest of 11 fines issued by the HHS Office of the Inspector General since 2003. During that time, more than 100 accidents have been reported to the CDC or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, both of which monitor parts of the biodefense research program.

The Livermore incident occurred when vials of anthrax were transported from Livermore Lab to laboratories in Florida and Virginia. When one package of 1,000 vials of anthrax was opened, two vials had become uncapped and a third cap was loose, according to lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton.

Houghton said no anthrax was released during shipping because there were multiple layers of protection.

"It's packaging within packaging within packaging," she said.

The lab took immediate action to correct the problem and voluntarily suspended research with anthrax and other deadly biological substances for seven months, Houghton said, after which time the Centers for Disease Control renewed the lab's registration to work with biological agents for three years.

"We're going to work to make sure this never happens again," she said.

A corporation run by UC and Bechtel Corp. and several other private companies took over management of the lab Monday.

The subcommittee hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was prompted by several recent laboratory accidents, some of which resulted in human exposure such as a bite by a bird-flu infected ferret at a lab in Rockville, Md. and a plague-infected monkey bite in Albuquerque, N.M.

Rapid growth in the number of biodefense laboratories researching deadly pathogens has overwhelmed the government's ability to adequately monitor the program, federal investigators told Congress on Thursday.

Officials said the expansion of the program over the last few years, coupled with a lack of training of lab workers and poor reporting of lab accidents, posed a potential threat to national security and public health.

"There are too many [labs-- at the moment for the level of oversight that's being provided," said Keith Rhodes, chief author of a preliminary report from the Government Accountability Office on biodefense and emerging diseases research. "It's stretched beyond the ability of the fragmented, decentralized oversight that there is now."

Rhodes also expressed concern that, in a survey of 12 federal agencies, none of them could tabulate a total number of the high- security labs -- known as Bio-Safety Level 3 and 4 labs which do research on deadly biological agents such as Ebola, anthrax and the plague.

Livermore Lab's Site 300 near Tracy was among the sites being considered for a new Homeland Security Bio-Safety Level 4 lab to replace the aging Plum Island Animal Research Center in New York, but is not one of finalists which include sites in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.

At the hearing, Dr. Richard E. Besser, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, acknowledged that lab oversight could be improved. He said it was "critically important" for the government to begin convening a task force to suggest better ways to watch over the now-sprawling biodefense program.

Experts say the accidents are an outgrowth of the increase in biodefense work since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the still-unsolved anthrax mailings that took place a week later. Five people died and 17 were infected by anthrax spores sent in ordinary- looking letters.

Funding for biodefense research from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has grown dramatically, from $187 million in 2002 to $1.6 billion in 2006.

Rhodes said the FBI was particularly concerned about its burgeoning workload in conducting background checks on scientists applying to work on a group of 72 of the most dangerous pathogens, known as "select agents.

"As the number of laboratories balloons, [the FBI's-- workload balloons," he said.

Staff writer Betsy Mason, Los Angeles Times staff writer Jia-Rui Chong, and Newsday staff writer Carol Eisenberg contributed to this report.