NATICK – Natick’s health officials are considering implementing local lab regulations just weeks after plans to renovate Natick Mall’s Neiman Marcus store into a research and development facility fueled community safety talks.
Last month, neighbors at the mall expressed concern that NM Redevelopment’s plans for the site could eventually include a laboratory. The project is still at an early stage and the developers have not yet confirmed that the project will actually include a laboratory.
Subsequent conversations focus on biosafety levels – labels assigned to laboratories to determine the necessary protective measures depending on the materials they use.
What do biosafety levels mean?
Each level of biosafety (BSL) comes with certain risks, but also with certain safeguards, safety measures and oversight, Public Health Director Michael Boudreau said in a presentation at a meeting of the Health Board on Tuesday.
For example, BSL 1 laboratories work with materials that pose minimal risk to the community.
“A level 1 biosafety lab is essentially a high school lab,” Boudreau said.
BSL 2 laboratories may work with microbes that pose a moderate hazard under certain conditions, but the materials used are “not exotic,” he said. “It’s not known that they’re crawling on you.”
He said BSL 3 laboratories could deal with microbes such as tuberculosis or COVID-19, while BSL 4 laboratories would see more dangerous materials such as Ebola or the Marburg virus.
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NM Redevelopment, a subsidiary of Boston-based real estate company Bulfinch Companies Inc., previously told the Daily News that the property was designed to be Biosafety Level 1 or 2 and that BSL 4 was not within the developer’s scope. .
According to Boudreau, regulation and supervision of laboratories can come from a number of agencies, departments and policies – local, state and federal. At the local level, this includes zoning regulations, the fire department, the construction department and the health council, he explained.
Do other communities regulate laboratories?
“Many cities in Massachusetts have promulgated regulations banning biomedical research on BSL 3 or BSL 4,” he said, citing Lexington, Bedford, Newton, Framingham and Cambridge as some close communities with existing regulations.
He suggested that the health council discuss developing its own regulations for Natick.
“We certainly have that ability,” Boudreau said. “We can certainly make them. I would suggest that if we go down this path, we ban BSL 3 and higher. “
He said the intention was not to halt scientific progress, “but we also want to make sure that this is done in a safe way, given the protection of public health”.
Boudreau said he could draft regulations and seek the opinion of the city council before presenting them to the health council at a later date, and board members seemed open to the idea.
“This certainly seems to be an appropriate regulation that we need to have,” said board officer Don Breda.
Neighbors weigh
Community members who spoke at the meeting also seemed open to possible regulations.
“We would really like to urge you to adopt a statute that includes a minimum distance of 1,000 feet between the exhaust pipes from each structure that houses biolabs to the nearest residential property,” said Stacy Randall, who lives at Nouvelle in Natick. condominium. next to the mall.
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She was among several neighbors who expressed concerns about exhaust fumes or fumes from a potential lab polluting the air in their homes.
“No exhaust gas filtration system is 100% efficient,” Randall said.
According to Patricia Elmore, also a resident of Nouvel, the neighbors’ concerns are not about research, but about safety.
“I’m a statistician,” she said. “Many of the people who live here are doctors and researchers themselves. We are not against research. We are not against science, but we do not want them where we live and where we eat.
Raj Goyal, a professor of medicine who said he was in charge of running the laboratory complexes, called for more local oversight and regulation.
“All security is local,” he said.
Abby Patkin is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. Follow Abby on Twitter @AMPatkin. It can be found at [email protected]