Boston University Medical Campus’ can officially begin building its heavily protested Level 4 Biosafety laboratory, as the National Institutes of Health gave its approval yesterday in Washington.
The high-security research lab will house some of the world’s deadliest strains of diseases and viruses, including Ebola and anthrax, as tools for scientists to study while working to find cures and medications for some of the health concerns plaguing the globe.
Additionally, the federal government will give $128 million to BU to help fund the lab, and BUMC officials project construction will be completed in the summer of 2008, according to a Feb. 3 article in The Boston Globe.
BU officials promised to take extensive care to ensure the extremely hazardous viruses do not escape the premises, but Roxbury residents have continually protested the lab and claim it’s impossible to secure the biolab, according to the article.
BUMC officials came under fire in May of 2004 after three researchers were infected with a highly communicable form of the tularemia bacteria and officials delayed alerting public authorities for two weeks, according to theJan. 21, 2005 Daily Free Press .
BU labs have also been cited for negligence following charges of excreting waste mercury and silver into the Boston sewer system between 2000 and 2004, but officials from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority said that BUMC is not abnormally careless or dangerous.
BUMC has also been the target of lawsuits by local activist groups, which claimed that Medical Campus officials neglected to acknowledge the extent of the South End lab’s environmental impact and did review other locations before committing to build the lab in Roxbury.
Roxbury will be the most densely populated site for any Level 4 laboratory in the country, with a population of 17,000 people per square mile, which causes concern as Boston is a high-risk area for terrorism and already has the largest concentration of biotechnology companies in the nation.
To date, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is the densest area with a Level 4 lab, located within a vicinity with 3,500 people per square mile, according to the article.