Biological risks in microbiology laboratory are type of risks that employees are exposed to and can cause high risk to their health. According to classification of biological agents into four classes (based on hazard), are laboratories classified into four biosafety levels. Safety measures and work procedures in laboratories are based on the characteristics of the biological agents. Managing biosafety risks is a process, that begins with the identification of risks, continues to reduce or eliminate risks and implementation of necessary measures.
Risk identification is the first and crucial step in ensuring safety in laboratory. According to the identified risks in the laboratory and reviewed literature and the data from conducted survey in the microbiological laboratory, that I have prepared, an initiating event was considered in this thesis, which was assessed as the worst-case scenario when working with biological agents. In the case of selected initiating event, an Event Tree was created. The Event Tree is a well-established logical graphical method associated with accidental incidents, which can, depending on the identified risks, assess the probabilities of individual events and calculate the probability of the defined consequences with respect to the initial event. Depending on the frequency of the initiating event and the estimated probability of segment relevant events, my goal was to calculate the probabilities of the initial event. For a specific event, in the master’s thesis, the probabilities of certain consequences were calculated with the validity of certain assumptions. Based on calculations, I found that while working in labs, classified in class 1 and 2, there is a maximum probability of no risk, but under certain assumptions there exist risk to health. On the basis of cases of accidents in the literature and the course of Event tree, I have found that accidents can cause risk to health and in some cases even death to the people, exposed to an infection with a biological agent.
For employed workers in laboratory and others, exposed to health hazardous agents while performing their work, it is necessary to ensure safe processes and thus reduce the possibility of accidents and injuries at work. Employees should be encouraged to report incidents at work, as this is the only way to get the right picture of the state of safety in the work environment and tools to strengthen safety precautions.
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