a) Have your team members received any safety training yet?
b) Please briefly describe the topics that you learned about (or will learn about) in your safety training.
c) 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.
a) 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.
b) What are the biosafety guidelines of your institution? Please give a link to these guidelines, or briefly describe them if you cannot give a link.
c) In your country, what are the regulations that govern biosafety in research laboratories? Please give a link to these regulations, or briefly describe them if you cannot give a link.
Please describe risks of working with the biological materials (cells, organisms, DNA, etc.) that you are using in your project. If you are taking any safety precautions (even basic ones, like rubber gloves), that is because your work has some risks, however small. Therefore, please discuss possible risks and what you have done (or might do) to minimize them, instead of simply saying that there are no risks at all.
a) Risks to the safety and health of team members, or other people working in the lab:
b) Risks to the safety and health of the general public (if any biological materials escaped from your lab):
c) Risks to the environment (from waste disposal, or from materials escaping from your lab):
d) Risks to security through malicious mis-use by individuals, groups, or countries:
e) What measures are you taking to reduce these risks? (For example: safe lab practices, choices of which organisms to use.)
What would happen if all your dreams came true, and your project grew from a small lab study into a commercial/industrial/medical product that was used by many people? We invite you to speculate broadly and discuss possibilities, rather than providing definite answers. Even if the product is "safe", please discuss possible risks and how they could be addressed, rather than simply saying that there are no risks at all.
a) 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?
b) 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.
If you are completing a Preliminary Version of your Safety Form, use this space to describe how far you have progressed in your project, and give some comments about any questions that you left blank.
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