Animal Experiments and Laboratory Safety within the Scope of Occupational Health and Biosafety

Abstract

Occupational health and biosecurity terms include scientific approaches regarding ethical values, reliable methods, and a series of precautions to be taken against risks and hazards for employees and the living material being studied. Research and development activities carried out within the scope of biotechnology involve many risks under laboratory conditions, which are their own physical area. Many precautions and practices have been defined to analyze these risks and take precautions before they occur, and laboratory guides have been created in line with these definitions. During studies carried out with experimental animals under laboratory conditions, safe working rules may be violated due to physical conditions, equipment and materials, treatments applied to the subjects, negligence, or faulty practices caused by the researcher or expert. Biosafety in animal experiments consists of a set of ethical conditions and practices declared in the guidelines of specialized laboratories at their own level, protecting employees, subjects, and life outside the laboratory. In this review, possible risks and dangers that may arise at different biosafety levels and the precautions and practices that can be taken against them are evaluated. In this way, it was aimed to contribute to the development of laboratory and biosafety criteria in animal experiments.