Safety/Risk Assessment Tool
Risk Assessment Tool
iGEM is working with experts from around the world to create a tool to help identify any risks associated with your project and steps you might take to manage them. This tool can help in completing the required safety and security form.
As part of being responsible scientists and engineers, all iGEM teams are required to identify and manage any risks associated with their project. All teams must share what risks they have identified and the procedures, practices and other measures they have taken to mitigate them by completing the safety and security form. Teams also need to think about and address any risks should their project ever be fully realised (for example as a treatment, production process, sensor, etc.).
When thinking about possible risks, teams need to consider potential harm to themselves, their colleagues, communities and the environment. You might need to think about:
- What is being done - will there be a risk of generating aerosols, for example? Could your parts when combined as planned result in a hazard?
- What is being used - are you using pathogens, if so how virulent? Are any of your parts connected to virulence or transmissibility of pathogens? How much of a hazardous material or agent is being used? Can the hazard be addressed through the use of medical countermeasures (such as vaccines, drugs or antibiotics)?
Additional resources
- Laboratory Biosafety and Biosecurity Risk Assessment Technical Guidance Document , International Federation of Biosafety Associations and Sandia National Laboratories
- Pathogen Risk Assessment, Public Health Agency of Canada
- Biological Risk Assessment Worksheet, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Risk Assessment Best Practices, US Association of Public Health Laboratories
- Guidance notes for risk assessment outlined in annex 3 of council directive 90/219/EEC on the contained use of genetically modified micro-organisms, Commission of the European Communities
- Contained use of GMOs and/or pathogens: Tools for risk assessment and risk management, Belgian Biosafety
- Traditional Biological Risk Assessment, Synberc (on YouTube)
iGEM Foundation
The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of synthetic biology, education and competition, and the development of an open community and collaboration. Visit us at igem.org
hq AT igem DOT org
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