Alison Young

USA TODAY

Congressional watchdogs are concerned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t told them about all of the agency’s laboratory accidents, and they want a full accounting in the wake of a USA TODAY report about mishaps the agency tried to keep secret.

Those incidents, detailed in heavily-redacted records recently obtained by USA TODAY, include an apparently lost box of deadly influenza specimens, potential exposures to viruses and bacteria, and a purified air hose suddenly disconnecting from a scientist’s full-body spacesuit-like gear while working in a lab that handles the world’s most deadly pathogens.

But after taking nearly two years to release the reports about incidents that occurred from 2013 to 2015, the CDC blacked out large swaths of information when accidents involved particularly dangerous pathogens, such as anthrax, Ebola and certain deadly strains of influenza.

In a letter sent Tuesday, leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have given the CDC until the end of the month to give them a list of all lab safety incidents at the agency since 2012. The committee also wants an unredacted version of the 503 pages of lab incident reports the CDC released to USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act. In many of the records , the CDC cited a 2002 bioterrorism law and removed information including the types of pathogens involved and descriptions of what happened.

“Because of the redactions, it is difficult to know whether the CDC has previously disclosed the incidents described in the USA Today article to the Committee. However the details in the article seem to indicate that most, if not all, of these incidents were not disclosed to the Committee,” said the letter to CDC director Tom Frieden. It was signed by committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa.

The CDC said it has received the letter and "will follow up on their request for information."

If the incidents weren’t previously disclosed to the committee, it would be the second time in seven months that USA TODAY’s Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed that the CDC has not given members of Congress all of the information they’ve requested. The committee has held several hearings in recent years examining serious safety lapses at the CDC and other federal labs, as well as the adequacy of federal oversight programs.

“It is vital for the safety of CDC lab scientists and for the public that the CDC has a full picture of all incidents involving dangerous germs such as anthrax, Ebola, plague, and possibly the reconstituted flu strain that caused 50 million deaths in the 1918 pandemic,” Walden and Murphy said in a statement to USA TODAY.

The CDC, which operates numerous labs spread across many buildings in multiple states, lacked a comprehensive policy for centralized reporting of lab incidents – a critical component in identifying safety trends – until July 2015, USA TODAY previously revealed. Under that new policy, incident reports are supposed to go to a newly-created CDC lab safety office at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters. USA TODAY earlier this month asked the CDC to release copies of all incident reports filed with the lab safety office during 2016, but the agency often takes years to release such records under the Freedom of Information Act.

In addition to operating its own scientific laboratories, an arm of the CDC also co-runs the Federal Select Agent Program that inspects and regulates about 290 government, military, university, private and commercial labs that work with potential bioterror pathogens such as those that cause anthrax, Ebola, the plague and the toxins that cause botulism and ricin poisoning. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is the CDC’s partner in the regulatory program.

Critics say the ongoing revelations of lab incidents at the CDC and other facilities show the need to reassess whether the current regulatory system is working. Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, a member of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said it is time for Congress to conduct a comprehensive review of the Select Agent Program. “Not just a hearing, but a major reassessment,” Daschle told USA TODAY. The panel issued a report in December that flags the inaction.

The bipartisan panel, co-chaired by former Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, is sponsored by the Hudson Institute and Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Since 2009, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has repeatedly made recommendations for improving lab oversight, especially the need to establish a single federal entity to oversee high-containment laboratories that work with the most dangerous pathogens.

Daschle noted that much of the scientific work done at the labs is important to public health and national security. “So we don’t want to obstruct it, but we do want it to be conducted safely, and with a level of transparency within a reasonable interpretation of legal parameters.”

The USA TODAY Network's "Biolabs in Your Backyard" investigation, published since 2015, has revealed hundreds of accidents at corporate, university, government and military labs nationwide. It also has exposed a system of fragmented federal oversight and pervasive secrecy that obscures failings by facilities and regulators.

Read full coverage of USA TODAY's ongoing investigation of lab safety and security incidents: biolabs.usatoday.com. Follow investigative reporter Alison Young on Twitter: @alisonannyoung.

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