Beyond Compliance: The Impactful Role of Biosafety Controls and Good Laboratory Practices in a Biosafety Program

Biosafety is a critical aspect of laboratory medicine that is defined as the application of principles and practices to prevent infections, chemical and physical hazards in the laboratory. In order to achieve optimal biosafety in clinical and research laboratories, it is necessary to implement rules, regulations and procedures for preventing hazards related with laboratory work. This not only impacts the health of laboratory personnel but also significantly affects environmental health outside the laboratory. Hence, a structured biosafety program built on the principles of established evidence and guidelines functions to implement all the requisite protocols. The primary controls of biosafety and good laboratory practices and procedures (GLPPs) are two of the cardinal pillars of such a biosafety program, each providing its own courses of action for implementing biosafety in stepwise methodology. The four primary controls of biosafety comprise of engineering controls, standard operating procedures, personal protective equipment and leadership. Each of these controls play a pivotal role in ensuring biosafety and augmenting the effect of other controls. On the other hand, GLPPs consists of a set of procedures to enforce safety while performing laboratory tasks and is to be adopted by all laboratory personnel. The aim of GLPP is to advance a methodical and strict approach to laboratory work to reduce errors and to guarantee the accuracy of the results. The authors provide an overview of the primary controls for biosafety and GLPPs in this article, emphasizing their importance in a laboratory biosafety program.