The UK has BSL4 labs, too. Happy?

We've written a lot about US high containment laboratories for potential biowarfare agents and extremely dangerous pathogens for which there is no vaccine or cure. But the UK likes to build these labs, too. In fact they have five of them. Where? Nah, nah. The UK's Health and Safety Executive is not gonna tell you. The terrorists might find out, and I'm sure there's no way they could obtain that information -- unless of course, they read the UK's TimesOnLine, which says they "include the Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections at Colin-dale, northwest London, the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at Porton Down, Wiltshire, the military Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, and the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in South Mimms, Hertfordshire." Please don't tell anyone.

Are these labs reason for concern?

Experts say that most of these establishments have exemplary safety records, and that the Government requires and enforces some of the world's toughest standards. But they also caution that absolute security is impossible to guarantee, largely because of the human factor.

Security at the institute [National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR)] is "as good as it can be but nothing is 100 per cent", Simon Caidan, the institute's safety and security manager, admitted as he showed The Times the formidable system of filters, airlocks, negative air pressure, alarms and other technologies that prevent the avian flu viruses escaping from Containment 4. (TimesOnLine)

This seems pretty definitive. The Experts -- no doubt serious, disinterested experts -- tell us the labs have good safety records. I'm sure they have good reasons for saying this. Moreover we have from the lab's own safety and security manager that the security is as good as it can be. Of course, he adds parenthetically, nothing is guaranteed. Oh.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) licenses laboratories to work with some of the 13 viruses considered most deadly to animals. These include foot-and-mouth, rabies, avian flu and swine vesicular disease. Defra also refuses to name the establishments, but among them are the NIMR, the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) laboratory at Pirbright, and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey.

Almost all these establishments have excellent safety records. A scientist at Porton Down contracted (and survived) Marburg disease, but that was back in 1976. Two laboratory workers, one at Birmingham University and the other at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, were infected with smallpox in the 1970s.

Sure sounds like an excellent safety record to me. Of course, there are always "exceptions":

The possible exceptions are the two IAH laboratories at Pirbright and at Compton in Berkshire. Pirbright was linked with a foot-and-mouth outbreak near Guildford in 1960, and Pirbright and Compton have between them received half a dozen "notices" from the HSE over the past four years. The most serious came last February when Compton was told to stop work on cattle infected with bovine TB because of a faulty ventilation system.

But Mr Caidan, the NIMR safety manager, said he was very surprised by the latest apparent leak of the foot-and-mouth virus from the Pirbright complex, which is governed by the same draconian security rules and regulations as his own. As Containment 4 is presently being refurbished, he agreed to show The Times around.

Yes, surprising indeed. Anyway, I'm not worried. What's there to worry about?

The NIMR includes one of four world influenza centres, and regularly receives new strains of avian flu, mostly from the Middle East and states of the former Soviet Union. Mr Caidan explained that only six scientists and three animal technicians are authorised to enter Containment 4. All will have had security clearances, and all will have received months of training -- with exams. The laboratory is rigorously inspected each year by the HSE and Defra, and regularly visited by counter-terrorism officers.

What a relief.