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Should the condensate drain from an autoclave be inside or outside the containment area in the design of biosafety level 3 suites ?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Keene, John Harrington. |
| Abstract | Do you have a biosafety question and you're not sure who to ask? Send your questions to the " Ask the Experts " column and I'll get them answered for you. Drawing from my own experience or that of other experts in the field we'll try to compile a thorough and comprehensive answer to your question. Please e-mail your questions to jkeene@biohaztec. Should the condensate drain from an autoclave be inside or outside the containment area in the design of biosafety level 3 suites? This question is plaguing many who are currently involved with the design, construction, and operation of BSL-3 biocontainment laboratories. With the assistance of Karen Byers and Lynn Hard-ing, two articles have been located that, on the surface , seem to indicate that there would be a potential release of viable organisms during the initial purging of a steam-jacketed autoclave. Barbeito and Brookey (1976) modified an auto-clave so that they could introduce an aerosol of microbial agents into the chamber prior to initiating the sterilization cycle and then sampled the air and surrounding surfaces for the test agents. They also modified the steam baffles in the autoclave to allow for " unobstructed dispersal of the test organisms. " In addition, the authors initiated experiments in a small, unmodified autoclave in which they spiked the loads with large numbers of dry spores or bacteria to obtain a theoretical concentration in the range of 10 7 to10 12 organisms per cubic foot within the chamber. In these experiments, although a small percentage of spores may have been released when the steri-lizer was loaded with spores as a dry powder mixed with animal bedding or on other materials (an unre-alistic occurrence when following proper procedures), the authors state: " …no bacteria were released into the atmosphere when spores in a liquid suspension or vegetative cells in a liquid suspension or dry powder were tested. The results of these tests indicated that: (i) bacterial aerosols are not created by the pre-vacuum when bacteria are in suspensions or present as moistened suspensions on discard ma-terial… " In addition, a review of the results of the experiments demonstrates that the recoverable organisms , given the extremely large challenge, were in the order of 1x10-7 % to 1 x 10-5 %. Given the large challenges and the minimal recovery, it is apparent from this work that although release of agents may be possible, it … |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.absa.org/abj/abj/051001AskTheExperts.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
