The images are familiar from TV and movies: scientists in plastic space suits in a high-tech laboratory, desperately trying to identify some mysterious germ threatening to wipe out humanity. Usually, such scenes are set at the Centers for Disease Control laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, but in the future, they could be set in Winnipeg, where Canada now has its first “Level 4” laboratories, equipped to study the world’s deadliest diseases.
The $172-million Federal Laboratories, approved by the Treasury Board in 1987 and completed in 1997, were officially opened last week, following certification of the high-security labs (which really are only a small part of the facility). The complex is the first in the world that places human and animal health laboratories under one roof. This will allow researchers to collaborate more easily on diseases that affect both humans and animals, or move from one to another.
The 15-acre lab site is located close to the Health Sciences Centre complex and the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Medicine. Within the 29,000-square-metre complex are actually three different levels of laboratories.
Most are Level 2, where researchers work with pathogens that normally don’t pose a threat to lab workers, the community, livestock or the environment. Exposure in the lab rarely causes serious disease, risk of spread is limited, and effective treatment and preventative measures are available. Examples include the bacteria that cause salmonella and Legionnaire’s disease, and the virus that causes Hepatitis B.
In Level 3 labs, researchers work with much more dangerous pathogens, ones that usually cause serious human or animal disease, but which either do not ordinarily spread by casual contact or can be effectively treated. Examples are the bacteria that cause anthrax, the hantavirus, the viruses that cause Western equine encephalitis and rabies, and HIV.
Finally, in the Level 4 labs, researchers work with pathogens that produce serious and often untreatable human or animal diseases that are also readily transmitted. The best-known Level 4 pathogen is the Ebola virus. Others have ominous names like Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Kyasanur forest virus, and monkeypox.
Many layers of defense ensure that no microorganisms escape the Level 3 and Level 4 labs. All of them have a strong negative air pressure–that is, the air pressure in the labs is lower than that outside, so that if the labs spring a leak, air rushes in, not out. As well, special building materials and techniques ensure that there are no openings, even where electrical and plumbing equipment enter, through which pathogens could escape.
All the labs have airtight rooms and ductwork and interlocking, airtight doors. Entry is gained through an airlock system. Walls have 25 to 30 coats of paint to make them impervious, and windows are bullet-proof.
An entire floor is given over to filtering the air from the labs, using what’s called High-Efficiency Particulate Air filters that remove particles 85 times smaller than the smallest known disease-causing agent. All used filters are chemically sterilized before they are removed and destroyed. All biological solid and liquid wastes are completely sterilized using high pressure autoclaves, which superheat the material, destroying all micro-organisms.
It takes a scientist half an hour to prepare to enter one of the new Level 4 labs. First he strips out of his street clothes and puts on scrubs; then he climbs into a powder-blue plastic space suit suit, with its own air hose and communication system. He tapes his gloves to the suit, and enters the lab. Emerging takes about 45 minutes and involves, among other things, a two-minute chemical disinfectant shower and a four-minute rinse. One scientist said researchers usually stay in the lab for four to six hours, “depending on their bladder size.”
Now that it’s open, this facility, one of the finest in the world, will research everything from sexually transmitted diseases (excluding AIDS) to measles, salmonella, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis and hospital-acquired infections. It will do surveillance for early detection of animal diseases (such as mad-cow disease) in humans. And yes, it will research Ebola; Harvey Artsob, chief of the Level 4 program, will be bringing Ebola samples he is currently storing in Maryland to Winnipeg to continue work he did in Africa a few years ago on how the Ebola virus survives in nature.
The Federal Laboratories place Canada in the forefront of research into the world’s deadliest diseases. The next time they film a movie like “Outbreak,” maybe Dustin Hoffman will be playing a Canadian.
