In the past decade, the United States (U.S.) has enacted extensive federal legislation to regulate the possession, use, and transfer of dangerous microorganisms and toxins. Yet, few international laboratories have implemented similar safeguards. Limited data are available concerning the types of biological agents researched in non-U.S. laboratories and the biosafety and biosecurity practices employed to maintain those agents. To start addressing these knowledge gaps, an online survey was administered by BioInformatics, LLC in 2005 to 765 life scientists from 81 countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.Survey results revealed that participants are actively engaged in research with a wide variety of biological agents. Moreover, analysis of the biosafety and biosecurity data revealed several interesting findings; these findings are summarized into three major themes: biosafety is more prevalent than biosecurity, simple practices and techniques predominate, and perceptions of risk vary regionally. This survey provided unique insight into the variety of dangerous microorganisms and their toxins studied worldwide and uncovered a consistent weakness in laboratory biosafety and biosecurity. Because many of these facilities are located in volatile areas of the world, these findings indicate a potentially significant risk, and future actions are warranted to improve the safe and secure handling of biological agents internationally.
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To date, chemical security education practices in postsecondary institutions are poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to provide an initial understanding of the practices, attitudes, and barriers toward chemical security education for undergraduate and graduate programs in the United States (US) by surveying representatives of American Chemical Society (ACS)-approved programs. All programs with ACS-approved undergraduate chemistry programs (n = 691) were contacted for participation: 21% (n = 148) fully completed and 6% (n = 41) partially completed the survey for a combined total of 27% complete and/or partially complete surveys (n = 189). We observed that most programs currently teach chemical safety (undergraduate >99%, graduate 73%); however, only about one-third of programs teach chemical security at any education level (undergraduate 32%, graduate 34%). We also observed that safety education is provided more frequently than security education. Further, ACSapproved programs reported that their chemical safety culture was stronger than chemical security culture and felt that safety should be taught differently than security. The overwhelming majority of respondents (96%) indicated that chemical safety should be mandatory at some level, while only about half of respondents (57%) indicated that chemical security should be mandatory at some level. More efforts are needed by the chemistry community to raise awareness of the importance of chemical security education so that more institutions commit to training their faculty and students on the topic. The authors suggest that adoption of chemical security education could be increased if ACS were to advocate for chemical security by including it in its guidelines for educational program approval.
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