Winnipeg — Canadian Press Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 10:39PM EDT
An investigation is under way at the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory after what appears to have been an incident involving environmental contamination in one of the facility's Level 3 laboratories.
Officials said no one was hurt and the 30 employees who had originally been instructed to begin taking antibiotics in case they'd been exposed to an infectious agent were told they didn't need to continue taking the drugs.
Officials also insisted the incident posed no threat to the community.
The alarm was sounded when scientists working to extract RNA from anthrax in one of the Level 3 labs noticed that bacteria were growing on an agar plate they used as a safety test.
After extracting the RNA — which should leave no live organisms — as a safety precaution the scientists place a sample portion of the material on an agar plate, a medium on which bacteria can grow. If the work is done correctly, nothing should grow on the agar plate.
In this incident, something did, said Steven Jones, head of immunopathology, emerging bacterial diseases and the microbiological emergency response teams at the national lab.
Testing confirmed it wasn't anthrax.
Mr. Jones said Friday that a number of dangerous pathogens that are worked on in the Level 3 lab (the second highest biosecurity level) have also been ruled out, including plague and tularemia. The lab is still working to identify the bacteria.
Mr. Jones said it is believed that the bacteria were an environmental contaminant that poses no threat to the workers. But lab officials will be working to try to determine how the contamination, which should not occur, happened.
“Whenever we have an incident like this, we review our protocols and procedures, and that process is already started. We will go back over what was done and part of the investigation will be looking to see if we can work out where this infection was introduced into the system,” Mr. Jones said.
“What we want to know is how this snuck into our system.”
Mr. Jones said it is the policy of the National Microbiology Laboratory to go public with any incident, even if it believes the event is minor and poses no threat.
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