What Is Biosafety Level ?
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A biosafety level refers to level of precautions taken to segregate and isolate dangerous organisms or causes that can be present in an enclosed facility like a laboratory. The levels of containment vary from the lowest level, which is level 1, to the highest level, which is level 4. |
The higher the level, the greater is the risk to the external environment. At the highest level, the containment zone may only be a chemical fume hood. At the highest level, the organism is totally isolated from the world by means of sealed containers, sealed rooms or building systems. In some cases, even personal isolation is done wherein the person handling the bio-hazardous material has to wear special suit, and follow elaborate procedures for entering and leaving the containment room. There may also be high levels of security to access this room in a facility. Only authorized personnel can enter in an area that may have some effect on the quality of the containment area. This zone is called the hot zone.
Each level of biosafety requires the person entering the zone to take certain precautions. For instance, in biosafety level 1, the safety and precaution measures include wearing gloves, washing your hands with disinfectants and even wearing some sort of facial protection such as wearing a mask. In this case, the laboratory is generally not separated from the general traffic patterns in a particular building as the risk of to the surrounding environment is very low. The work is also done on open table tops using the standard practices to handle microbial organisms. However, all the materials after use are subject to decontamination to prevent any accidental spread of the pathogen or microbe.
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