Biohazard Risk Assessment and Containment
What this domain tests
Biohazard Risk Assessment and Containment tests your ability to assign controls from evidence, not from a label. Questions often present an agent, a procedure, a host, and a facility, then ask whether the proposed containment is adequate.
Core rules
- Risk group (RG) describes the agent’s hazard; biosafety level (BSL) describes the facility and practices. They are related but not identical. A RG2 agent handled in a high-concentration aerosol procedure may require BSL3 practices and equipment.
- Assess the agent: pathogenicity, infectious dose, route of exposure, host range, environmental stability, available prophylaxis or treatment, and genetic modification.
- Assess the activity: volume, concentration, aerosol generation, sharps, centrifugation, animal work, and worker immune status.
- Apply the hierarchy of controls: elimination/substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, then PPE. PPE is the last line, not the first.
- Risk assessment is documented, reviewed, and updated when the agent, procedure, personnel, or facility changes.
- Containment includes safe sharps, spill kits, disinfection validated for the agent, waste inactivation, and occupational health surveillance.
Worked example
A laboratory plans to centrifuge a RG2 bacterial culture without sealed cups and then open the rotor in an open bench area. The agent alone might suggest BSL2, but the activity creates an aerosol and surface-contamination risk. The correct response is to use sealed safety cups, perform opening in a BSC, and review whether BSL3 practices are required for the concentrated step. The reasoning is activity-based: containment follows the worst credible exposure scenario, not the agent’s lowest-risk use.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating RG with BSL.
- Assessing only the agent and ignoring the procedure.
- Treating risk assessment as a one-time paperwork exercise.
- Forgetting immunocompromised workers, allergens, chemicals, and radiation in the same room.
- Assuming a BSC protects against all chemical vapors.