Australian Animal Health Laboratory

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Australian Animal Health Laboratory Aahl-geelong-australia.jpg
Australian Animal Health Laboratory

The Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria, Australia is a high security laboratory, run by the CSIRO for exotic animal disease diagnosis and research. The lab is one of four Biosafety Level-4 labs in the country.

Geelong City in Victoria, Australia

Geelong is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia. Geelong is 75 kilometres (47 mi) south-west of the state capital, Melbourne. It is the second largest Victorian city, with an estimated urban population of 253,269 as of June 2016. Geelong runs from the plains of Lara in the north to the rolling hills of Waurn Ponds to the south, with Corio Bay to the east and hills to the west. Geelong is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Geelong municipality, which covers urban, rural and coastal areas surrounding the city, including the Bellarine Peninsula.

Victoria (Australia) State in Australia

Victoria is a state in south-eastern Australia. Victoria is Australia's smallest mainland state and its second-most populous state overall, making it the most densely populated state overall. Most of its population lives concentrated in the area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, which includes the metropolitan area of its state capital and largest city, Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city. Victoria is bordered by Bass Strait and Tasmania to the south, New South Wales to the north, the Tasman Sea to the east, and South Australia to the west.

Australia Country in Oceania

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. The population of 26 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.

Contents

It opened in 1985 costing $185 million, built on Corio Oval. [1]

Corio Oval was an Australian rules football ground, located in Geelong, Victoria and used by the Geelong Football Club in the VFA from 1878 to 1896 and the VFL from 1897 to 1940. Sited in Eastern Park, the oval was served by trams from 1930 when the line was extended along Ryrie Street to the football ground.

In November 2012 it delivered an experimental vaccine to help protect horses against the deadly Hendra virus. [2]

History

In 1977 Jim Peacock of the Australian Academy of Science asked Bill Snowdon, then Chief CSIRO AAHL if he could have the newly released USA NIH and the British equivalent requirements for the development of infrastructure for bio-containment reviewed by AAHL personnel with a view to recommending the adoption of one of them by Australian authorities. The review was carried out by CSIRO AAHL Project Manager Bill Curnow and CSIRO Engineer Arthur Jenkins. They drafted outcomes for each of the levels of security. AAHL was notionally classified as "substantially beyond P4". These were adopted by the Australian Academy of Science and became the basis for Australian Legislation.

The Australian Animal Health Laboratory was commissioned in 1985, [3] includes a number of laboratories and animal house facilities capable of operating at three steps of negative pressure below the lowest pressure within any part of the extramural wind-zone of the building exterior. External pressure and the cascaded negative pressure zones are measured and maintained in real time by electronic sensors, electronically controlled supply and exhaust air handling systems and purpose developed predictive logic controllers in support of management protocols to manage air locks, access and services to prevent loss or ingress of potentially contaminated gases, solids or liquids . Supply air is protected by two 0.001 HEPA filters in tandem, (series mounted) with appropriate pre-filters in purpose designed individual housings. Filters and housings in pairs are then mounted as multiples in parallel according to airflow and volume requirement. This configuration allows the de-contamination, testing and/or replacement of any individual filter without the need to shut down operation. For exhaust air, similar filtration hardware and management arrangements apply. However, at least one stage of exhaust protection of a method not relying on filtration is provided. In the case of AAHL, the system adopted by CSIRO was "air incineration" at 1000 C and a retention/dwell time of more than 4 seconds at that temperature. Liquid scrubbing to prevent escape of formaldehyde is fitted after the afterburner for protection of the environment. Waste liquids can be dosed chemically in steam jacketed stainless steel tanks as the first barrier, followed by heating under pressure and maintained at elevated temperature for an appropriate time. Multiple tanks can be configured in tandem or in parallel according to need.

AAHL was designed and built before there were any regulations covering bio-containment. The later regulations were written by AAHL personnel. AAHL Staff were at pains to ensure that AAHL could contain any known or yet to be discovered organism. Politically there was opposition to the notion of having the facility at all. The Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, although in favor of the project, threatened serious consequences for management if the design team "got it wrong".

Innovation in the design delivered cost savings of between $30M and $50M so the design team felt that it was better to err on the safe side than to face the prospect of an angry PM. AAHL was very cost effective and safe as a result.[ citation needed ] The Australian Animal Health Laboratory is a Class 4/ P4 Laboratory.

Notes and references

  1. "CSIRO: Geelong - Australian Animal Health Laboratory".
  2. Andrew Warren (1 November 2012). "Vaccine arrives to boost the frontline fight against Hendra virus « News @ CSIRO". Archived from the original on 2 November 2012.
  3. "CSIRO: Geelong - Australian Animal Health Laboratory".

Coordinates: 38°09′04″S144°23′20″E / 38.151°S 144.389°E / -38.151; 144.389

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