1988 Agent Summary Statement for Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Report on Laboratory-Acquired Infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus [MMWR, Vol 37 No.S-4]

MMWR

April 1, 1988

2. Activities such as producing research-laboratory-scale amounts of HIV, manipulating concentrated virus preparations, and conducting procedures that may
produce aerosols or droplets should be performed in a BSL 2 facility with the
additional practices and containment equipment recommended for BSL 3 (19)
(Guidelines, pp. 14-17).
3. Activities involving industrial-scale, large-volume production or high concentration and manipulation of concentrated HIV should be conducted in a BSL 3 facility
using BSL 3 practices and equipment (19).
4. BSL 2 practices, containment equipment, and facilities for animals are recommended for activities involving nonhuman primates and any animals experimentally infected or inoculated with HIV. Because laboratory animals may bite, throw
feces or urine, or expectorate at humans, animal-care personnel, investigators,
technical staff, and other persons who enter the animal rooms should wear coats,
protective gloves, coveralls or uniforms, and-as appropriate-face shields or
surgical masks and eye shields to protect the skin and mucous membranes of the
eyes, nose, and mouth.
5. All laboratory glassware, disposable material, and waste material suspected or
known to contain HIV should be decontaminated, preferably in an autoclave,
before it is washed, discarded, etc. An alternate method of disposing of solid
wastes is incineration.
6. Laboratory workers should wear laboratory coats, gowns, or uniforms when
working with HIV or with material known or suspected to contain HIV. There is no
evidence that laboratory clothing poses a risk for HIV transmission; however,
clothing that becomes contaminated with HIV preparations should be decontaminated before being laundered or discarded. Laboratory personnel must remove
laboratory clothing before going to nonlaboratory areas.
7. Work surfaces should be decontaminated with an appropriate chemical germicide after procedures are completed, when surfaces are overtly contaminated,
and at the end of. each work day. Many commercially available chemical
disinfectants (5,20-23) can be used for decontaminating laboratory work surfaces, for some laboratory instruments, for spot cleaning of contaminated
laboratory clothing, and for spills of infectious materials. Prompt decontamination of spills should be standard practice.
8. Universal precautions are recommended for handling all human blood specimens for hematologic, microbiologic, chemical, serologic testing; these are the
same precautions for preventing transmission of all bloodborne infections
including hepatitis B (17,21,24,25). It is not certain how effective 56 C-60 C heat is
in destroying HIV in serum (22,23,26), but heating small volumes of serum for 30
minutes. at 56 C before serologic testing reduces residual infectivity to below
detectable levels. Such treatment causes some false-positive results in HIV
enzyme immunoassays (27-30) and may also affect some biochemical assays
performed on serum (27,31,32).
9. Human serum from any source that is used as a control or reagent in a test
procedure should be handled at BSL 2 (Guidelines, pp. 11-13). Addendum 2 (p. 16)
to this report is a statement issued by CDC on the use of all human control and
reagent serum specimens shipped to other laboratories. The Food and Drug
Administration requires that manufacturers of human serum reagents use a
similarly worded statement.