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Legacy biological materials
3 October 2023
Biological substances are often discovered in the back of freezers and their provenance unknown. This causes problems in knowing what they are, the hazards and risks they present, and how to dispose of them.
Does your department have biological substances in storage?
All stored biological substances must be stored under the conditions of an authorised risk assessment. This includes material provided by a supplier and any biological research samples, aliquots or organisms produced by a project.
If your inventory has Hazard Group 2, 3, GM Class 1-3 agents, or GM animal and plant tissues, the risk assessment will define who the responsible person is (owner), the location, the hazards, the control measures and the waste disposal procedures which must be able to be correlated to the stored materials.
In the recent past, some labels have indicated that the department is in breach of regulations in possessing it.
Action to take
- Use your departmental routes of communication to make researchers aware that the owners of biological substances review and authorise the associated risk assessments if they have expired.
- Storage inventories (general biological agent contents and vial-by-vial inventories) should be reviewed to ensure the contents have an owner (responsible person) and an associated, authorised risk assessment.
- Note that the storage of GMMs is notifiable to HSE and even GM Class 1 organisms must be risk assessed to prove correct classification.
- If there are no responsible persons for substances, they must be assigned a new responsible person or destroyed and put into the correct waste streams.
- Prevent this from happening by putting in place a leaving form that includes describing the substances that will be archived in a department, so they may be transferred to a new responsible person.
Where can I get further information?
> Biological safety at UCL
> Safe and secure storage of biological agents
> Hazardous waste management
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