Summary

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is committed to ensuring the safe handling, storage, and disposal of potentially biohazardous materials, as defined below, used in university research or instructional projects. This policy is designed to ensure that employees, students and visitors follow safe practices when working with or near potentially biologically hazardous materials or recombinant DNA. The university will pursue biological safety through ensuring prudent practices to protect people and the environment from biological hazards and will conform to state and federal biosafety directives and guidelines. Implementation of this policy by the university is intended to provide a safe working atmosphere and a well-controlled research environment. The university’s concern is for all biosafety issues but in particular it is concerned with activities involving:

  • Infectious agents
  • Recombinant DNA research
  • Agents on the list of Select Agents
  • Potentially biologically hazardous materials

This policy statement describes the role of the university and the Office of Research Compliance (ORC), the Environmental Health and Safety Director (who is the Responsible Official with oversight over biosafety issues) and the Institutional Biological Safety Officer (BSO) in EH&S, the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), and the IBC’s structure and function. The Biological Safety Officer and IBC are charged with reviewing and approving projects that need to comply with federal regulations on the use of recombinant DNA and Select Agents. The review process is described below.