A Day at the World's Most Dangerous Lab

Some workplaces are stricter than others regarding breaks, but it's unlikely you've encountered a workplace like Dr. Inger Damon's. When Dr. Damon needs a break during her workday—even just to visit the restroom—she must go through a chemical spray shower, a water shower, and two locker rooms before she is declared 'non-contaminated.'

Damon heads the division for the world's most dangerous pathogens at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. She deals daily with the world’s deadliest bacteria and viruses. The lab building is nicknamed 'the virus vault,' though the CDC isn't fond of this name. Firstly, it contains more than just viruses, and secondly, there isn't actually a vault... although the security measures for pathogens are extreme. The lab building, operational since 2008, houses four labs classified with the chilling 'Level 4' status. Most pathogens in Level 4 labs have no treatments or vaccines available.

Only a select few lab workers hold the licenses and expertise required to work with these dangerous bacteria and viruses. Entry into the lab requires typing a unique code, an iris scan, and removing all personal clothing and accessories. The next step involves donning lab attire and something resembling a spacesuit: a suit engineered to continually push air outward to prevent anything from getting in. It is bulky, cumbersome, and restricts movement, making lab work even harder, not to mention causing dehydration, which isn't so bad, note the workers dryly, given that bathroom breaks are hardly possible.

Lab walls are made of thick concrete, designed to withstand natural disasters like massive earthquakes. The floors are sealed against water. Windows are locked and made of armored glass. Eating, drinking, or smoking is prohibited in the lab. Phones aren't allowed inside, although a computer is available for scientists to access their files.

"For every way a virus might escape, we have at least two ways to prevent it," Dr. Damon told 'BuzzFeed' this week. "Specimens are stored in safe cabinets, doors are completely sealed, air leaving the lab is immediately purified, and all waste produced is processed in a pressure chamber meant to neutralize it, then destroyed."

When lab employees finish their workday, they step into a decontamination chamber where chemicals are sprayed on the suits to eradicate any possible contamination. From there, they head to an inner locker room to remove the suit and the lab garments underneath. The clothes undergo thorough disinfection before laundering. Finally, employees must shower before they are allowed to wear their personal clothes and exit.

Not all viruses and bacteria in Level 4 labs have always had such high classification. For example, research on smallpox wasn't always conducted under such airtight conditions. However, at the end of the campaign to eradicate the virus in the 1970s, some researchers began working with it precisely as they had with less dangerous viruses. The result was infectious outbreaks in several labs. Accordingly, the decision was made that all work with the virus be conducted only under the safest lab conditions.

(Photo credit: shutterstock)

Smallpox is a disease you might not be familiar with, but its name alone haunted humanity for thousands of years. The disease presents with flu-like symptoms and unsightly pustules across the body, leaving severe facial scars on most survivors, of whom a third might suffer hearing loss or blindness as a result. It's a deadly disease, especially among children. At certain points in history, the child mortality rate for contracting smallpox was 98%. Many notable people perished due to smallpox infection: the list includes Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Tsar Peter II, and French King Louis XV.

Today, official smallpox specimens are located only in two places worldwide: at the CDC's campus and at the National Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology in Russia. Both countries have biological weapons programs, and smallpox plays a significant role in them because its transmission is so easy. It's quite possible that these countries have samples stored elsewhere—but if so, it's classified information. Additionally, it is unknown which states, if any, that encourage terrorism, might possess virus samples.

But beyond the official samples, it turns out people might encounter the virus quite by accident. Dr. Damon recounts that a few years ago, a group of researchers cleaning the freezer at the National Institutes of Health found an unopened box that had been there for years. The scientists discovered the box contained cultures with the Variola virus, which causes smallpox. The samples were old—but alive, existent, and kicking, making them extremely dangerous. "Even though these samples were stored in the 1940s, we identified components in them capable of spreading and growing." Fortunately, no one was harmed, the samples were moved to a Level 4 lab, and both the CDC and the FBI conducted an investigation to prevent such incidents in the future.

Still, no safety measure can provide absolute protection against every eventuality. Even with their nearly-excessive precautions, the CDC hasn't always been flawless. For example, early this year, Level 4 lab work was temporarily stopped due to concerns that air hoses connected to the work suits were not supplying air up to standards. Last year, four scientists encountered failures of chemical purification equipment, which suddenly stopped working. A few years ago, a bird flying through power lines caused a power outage affecting several labs. Battery power sustained the labs until the fault was fixed, but the CDC refuses to release data, for safety reasons, about which critical systems need power. They do claim that even if both power and generator fail—the labs' safety won't be compromised, and employees will evacuate safely.

Dr. Damon and her colleagues, nevertheless, express confidence in the safety measures provided to them. In the case of smallpox samples, though, they opt for additional protection and vaccinate against the disease—a vaccine that has exited routine immunization schedules after the World Health Organization declared smallpox effectively eradicated in the 1970s.

A major issue for researchers dealing with dangerous bacteria and viruses, says Dr. Mark Kortepeter, the former deputy director for medical research on infectious diseases in the U.S. Army, isn't confronting existing dangerous pathogens, but anticipating what the next deadly pathogen will be.

"SARS hit us out of nowhere. Ebola—who could have predicted such a major outbreak? Then Ebola disappeared, and suddenly the Zika virus appeared."

Despite this, he says the likelihood that a terrorist organization could capture a dangerous virus like smallpox and turn it into a weapon is very slim. The lab safety measures are too good. Theoretically, there's a way to bypass the safety measures: the genome of this virus is known, and anyone with precise information could recreate it in a sophisticated lab. But, he claims, no one thinks terrorist organizations are sophisticated enough for scientific activity at this level.

Those who did manage in the past to turn smallpox, as well as anthrax, into effective weapons were the Soviets, who engineered them to spread faster. The bitter fruits of this were reaped in 1979 when lab workers accidentally released anthrax into the air. This mistake, caused by neglecting to replace the filter in the correct pipe, caused the deaths of more than 60 people.

Nonetheless, this history doesn't worry the researchers accustomed to working with deadly pathogens. Their feeling is that they can handle safely studying the most dangerous viruses and bacteria known today—and any new dangerous pathogen that might pose a future threat.

"Infection control is a skill in itself," says Dr. Kortepeter. "And the medical community is generally ready to act when the time comes."