What is a Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL)?
Research on many infectious diseases requires a very specialized facility. The facility must be built to complex specifications for design, facilities, operations, maintenance, and operating procedures that ensure a high level of containment, or “biocontainment” since researchers are working with biological materials. The Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health provide containment guidelines, depending upon the types of biological materials under study. These range from biosafety levels 1 to 4 (BSL-1 to BSL-4). These requirements are designed to provide an environment that maintains safety for the research, the researchers and the adjacent communities. Extra security measures that are not typically found in academic laboratories also contribute to a safe environment in an RBL. Because the Federal government is encouraging and funding research on infectious diseases that typically require BSL-3 biocontainment, they also have provided construction grants to incr
