Safety

We have received safety training seminars in WHMIS 2015, Spill Response Training, Hazard Assessment, Biohazard Handling, Occupational Health and Safety, Incident Reporting and Investigation, and Laboratory Safety.

We have learned about the following topics in our safety training:

• Lab access and rules (including appropriate clothing, eating and drinking, etc.)
• Responsible individuals (lab or departmental specialist or institutional biosafety officer)
• Differences between biosafety levels
• Biosafety equipment (such as biosafety cabinets)
• Good microbial technique
• Disinfection and sterilization
• Emergency procedures
• Transport rules
• Chemicals, fire and electrical safety

Engineering System Controls

We have designed the system to be fail safe, which means that the system's design prevents or mitigates unsafe consequences of the system's failure. That is, if and when a "fail-safe" system "fails", it is "safe" or at least no less safe than when it was operating correctly. Because our system can operate in batch and continuous modes, it is possible to retain the matter inside different storage tanks throughout the process, thus allowing for longer retention while a specific component of the system is getting fixed.

We have also followed the inherent safety guidelines when designing our project, meaning that the process has a low level of danger, even when things go wrong. Our design minimizes the amount of hazardous material and completely remove (substitute principle) chloroform (solvent generally used for PHB extraction) from the design process. We have also removed the toxic sludge from the main liquid stream early on in the process design, thus diluting and lowering the toxic concentrations (moderate principle).

Applied design safety: Mars

During our interviews with Robert Thrisk and … we were informed that point of failure identification and accessibility are crucial on the ISS. We designed our process arrangement in such a  way to  allow astronaut easy and safe access to the failed component.

Identified most likely points of failure:

• The filter after the centrifugal separator clogging
• Bioreactor contaminated with dead bacterial cells
• Self-cleaning filter clogging

Special arrangement of the equipment:

*insert a graphic of how all the equipment pieces fall together*

Another important safety consideration factor mentioned by many of the consulted experts (made in Space, Robert Thirsk, Pascal Lee) is the volatility of the produced plastic, or in the other words - off gassing. (need to talk about the volatility of PHB)

Biohazard considerations for ISS and Mars

NASA is adapting the same biosafety hazard levels as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA. The biohazard level 1 and 2 materials are allowed on the ISS, while levels 3 and 4 are generally prohibited, yet case-by-case consideration sometimes results in levels 3,4 being permitted as well. (Biosafety review board operations and requirements document, 2017). Our team assumes the same guidelines for the Martian Colonies.

Biosafety level 1 (BSL-1) is suitable for work with well-characterized agents which do not cause disease in healthy humans. In general, these agents should pose minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment (Biosafety review board operations and requirements document, 2017). The e coli falls under the BSL-1 description and hence can be confidentyl assumed to be safe for ISS and Mars.