Hundreds of safety incidents with bioterror germs reported by secretive US labs

US laboratories reported more than 230 safety incidents with bioterror viruses and bacteria last year, hundreds of workers were monitored for potential exposures, and a handful of labs had their permits suspended because of violations that raised “significant concerns for imminent danger,” according to a report released Thursday by federal lab regulators in response to a White House call for greater public transparency.

Background checks by the FBI stopped 16 individuals who posed security risks – including six convicted felons, two fugitives and a person found to be a “mental defective” - from working in labs where they’d have access to pathogens such as those that cause anthrax, Ebola, plague and botulism, the report said.

But in their first-ever public report, regulators continue to keep secret the identities of the labs that had serious safety accidents and faced enforcement actions when working with what the government calls “select agent” pathogens because of their potential to be used as bioweapons.

The report even keeps secret the widely reported name of the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground lab in Utah, which last year was discovered to have been mistakenly sending specimens of live anthrax – labeled as killed – to dozens unsuspecting labs across the country and around the world. The report only describes the lab as an entity of the federal government and doesn’t name the type of live pathogen that was shipped.

The kind of aggregate information in the report “remains useless to communities who want to know how safely their local laboratories are operating and what is being done to correct problems,” said Beth Willis, a citizen lab safety advocate in Frederick, Md., where several large biodefense labs are located at the Army’s Fort Detrick. “The lack of progress toward meaningful transparency is astonishing.”

Federal lab regulators said the report provides a broad picture of safety and oversight of labs working with these kinds of pathogens. It’s part of “a journey to increase transparency,” said Daniel Sosin, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Select Agents and Toxins, which co-runs the federal lab regulation program with the US Department of Agriculture.