Can't Touch This! Contamination of Laboratory Equipment with Bloodborne Pathogens.

Abstract

Clinical laboratory workers encounter a variety of occupational hazards, including exposure to infectious agents. The routes of pathogen exposure associated with laboratory work include ingestion, inhalation, direct inoculation, and contamination of skin and mucous membranes (1). The accidental inoculation of infectious materials (i.e., via contaminated needles, broken glass, or other sharps) is the leading cause of laboratory-associated infections (1). In the 1980s, the emergence of the HIV epidemic created an appreciation for biosafety and laboratory-acquired infections, ultimately leading to both practice guidelines and legislation to reduce the risk of exposure of laboratory workers to bloodborne pathogens; this was implemented by the adoption of Universal Precautions in 1987, and later, in 1996, these became a component of Standard Precautions (2). The actual incidence and risk of laboratory-acquired infections is very difficult to quantify in the absence of standardized reporting systems, as well as the challenge of attributing a specific exposure to acquisition of infection. The most comprehensive studies to date attempting to estimate the incidence and epidemiology of laboratory-acquired infections were completed prior to 1980, and it is difficult to generalize them to today's laboratory environment, for a variety of reasons—standards for personal protective equipment have changed, the availability of vaccines, the epidemiology of bloodborne infections has changed, and the way laboratory testing is performed has changed (with a shift away from primarily manual methods to more automated methods). That said, since 1999, only 1 confirmed case of laboratory-acquired HIV infection has been reported in the US; this case was secondary to a needle stick injury sustained in an individual working with a live HIV culture (2). The fear associated with the recent Ebola virus (EV)3 epidemic triggered a renewed interest in occupationally acquired infections in healthcare workers in the US, including the safety of laboratory workers in …