1.) Please briefly describe the topics that you have learned about (or will learn about) in your safety training:

    We have been educated in chemical awareness and precautions, proper lab attire, utilizing correct procedures while performing lab experiments, general lab hazards such as broken glass, and cautious use of heavy metals.

2.) Please give a link to the laboratory safety training requirements of your institution: (college, university, community lab, etc). Or, if you cannot give a link, briefly describe the requirements.

    Because we work in a high school, we operate under biosafety level 1 across the board. We teach new members safety techniques through hands-on learning experiences.

1.) Who is responsible for biological safety at your institution? (You might have an institutional Biosafety Committee, an Office of Environmental Health and Safety, a single Biosafety Officer, or some other arrangement.) Have you discussed your project with them? Describe any concerns they raised, and any changes you made in your project based on your discussion:

    Anne Byford, who also serves as the project advisor, reviews the entire project and our day-to-day operations. Additionally, the project has been reviewed by a committee of staff members at our high school and a group from the county science fair. Their review included a site visit to our lab.

1.) Risks to the safety and health of team members, or other people working in the lab:

    Risks include general hazards involved in work with E. coli, risks involved in working with ethidium bromide and cadmium, and with our biofuels track, a potential resistance to hand sanitizer to ensure that no resistance is found. Few risks with the water detectors can be found due to the bacteria’s wide use in classrooms worldwide.

2.) Risks to the safety and health of the general public (if any biological materials escaped from your lab):

    Risks include potential contamination of public drinking water through misuse of product. However, if the contaminated water is run through the municipal wastewater treatment center, all contamination would be removed.

3.) Risks to the environment (from waste disposal, or from materials escaping from your lab):

    There are no unreasonable effects associated with bleach or the K12 strain of E. coli being introduced into the environment. The K12 strain cannot survive in the natural environment, it cannot produce spores, and it cannot colonize within other species’ digestive systems.

4.) Risks to security through malicious misuse by individuals, groups, or countries:

    Because all of our practices are carried out in accordance with BSL 1 guideline, there is almost no risk of malicious use of our product by a third party.

5.) What measures are you taking to reduce these risks? (For example: safe lab practices, choices of which organisms to use.)

    We continually operate in accordance with BSL 1. In addition to these, we utilize careful and continuing education in lab safety. We also work solely with the K1 strain of E. Coli to cut down on the risk associated with bacteria.

1.) What new risks might arise from your project’s growth? (Consider the categories of risk listed in parts a-d of the previous question: lab workers, the general public, the environment, and malicious mis-uses.) Also, what risks might arise if the knowledge you generate or the methods you develop became widely available?

    If our project became commercially available, few safety risks would arise. The tests we use mimic real-life situations and the parts we utilize are common in classrooms and labs worldwide. Because of this, very few parts of our project pose any risk.

2.) Does your project currently include any design features to reduce risks? Or, if you did all the future work to make your project grow into a popular product, would you plan to design any new features to minimize risks? For example: auxotrophic chassis, physical containment, etc.) Such features are not required for an iGEM project, but many teams choose to explore them.

    At the current time, we are not including kill switches, but plan to do so in the future.