Biosafety

Biosafety refers to the safe handling and containment of biohazards (hazardous biological substances) and also prevents the large-scale loss of biological integrity. In health and medicine, the biosafety discipline takes measures to dwindle the health risk from potential exposure to biohazards by preventing personnel exposure and environmental release.The biosafety practices are based on two principles: biorisk assessment and biocontainment. Biorisk assessment is the process to identify acceptable and unacceptable risks, biosecurity risks associated with biohazards, and their potential consequences. Based on a risk assessment these pathogen hazards are categorized into four risk groups (RGs) of ascending risk (RG1-RG4). The biorisk could arise from an unintentional exposure, accidental release or loss, theft, misuse, unauthorized access, or intentional unauthorized release (bioterrorism). On the other hand, primary and secondary biocontainment describe safe methods for properly managing biohazardous agents in the working environment where they are being handled or maintained. Therefore, a biosafety level (BSL) is a set of biocontainment precautions required to handle dangerous biohazards in aconfined facility.

The containment levels range from the lowest BSL-1 (or P1) with limited precautions relative to other levels, to the highest BSL-4 (or P4) for the utmost level of biosafety precautions. Thus, the assignment of a BSL takes into consideration the organism used, the facilities available, and the equipment practices and procedures. In general, as the relative risk of an agent increases the degree of containment for working with the agent must also increase not only because of their virulence but also because of their potential for use in bioterrorism. Biosafety is also related to some other fields like agriculture, biotechnology, ecology, chemistry, synthetic biology, exobiology, etc. Among these, agriculture biosafety assesses and monitors the effects of potential gene flow, competitiveness and the effects on other organisms, as well as probable harmful effects of the products on the health of humans and animals.

In the context of agricultural pathogens, it relates to safety practices and procedures employed to stave off unintended infection of plants or animals or the environmental release of pathogenic agents. Biotechnological biosafety refers to the need to protect the environment and health from the possible adverse effects of biotechnologically modified organisms and their resulting products which is somewhat related to the biosafety of synthetic biology. The exobiology biosafety aims for planetary protection and interplanetary contamination prevention. [Md. Rakibul Islam]