FAQ & Answers
1. What is biorisk management (BRM)?
Answer:
‘Biorisk management’ is the effective management of risks posed by working with infectious agents and toxins in laboratories;
it includes a range of practices and procedures to ensure the biosafety, biosecurity, and biocontainment of those infectious agents and toxins.
2. What is biosafety?
Answer:
Biosafety is a term used to describe efforts to reduce and eliminate potential risks arising from the use of modern biotechnology or
Living Modified Organism (LMO) and its products in order to safeguard human, plant and animal health, the environment and biological diversity.
3. What is biorisk management (BRM)?
Answer:
Laboratory biosecurity describes the protection, control and accountability for biological agents and toxins within laboratories, in order to
prevent their loss, theft, misuse, diversion of, unauthorised access or intentional unauthorised release.
4. What is a Hazard?
Answer:
Source, situation, or act with a potential for causing harm.
5. What is biohazard?
Answer:
A potential source of harm caused by biological agents or toxins.
6. What is mean by a biological agent?
Answer:
Any microorganism including those which have been genetically modified,
cell cultures and endoparasites, which may be able to provoke any infection, allergy or toxicity in humans, animals or plants.
7. What is biorisk?
Answer:
Combination of the probability of occurrence of harm and the severity of that harm where the source of harm is a biological agent or toxin.
8. What is a biorisk assessment?
Answer:
A process of evaluating the biorisk(s) arising from a biohazard(s), taking into account the adequacy of any existing controls, and deciding whether or not the biorisk(s) is acceptable.
9. How we define a laboratory accident?
Answer:
Unintended event giving rise to harm.
10. Why was the Biosafety Act 2007 [Act 678] enacted?
Answer:
The Biosafety Act 2007 [Act 678] was enacted in order to establish the National Biosafety Board (NBB) to regulate the activities of release, importation and use of Living Modified Organism (LMO)
and its products, with the objectives of protecting human, plant and animal health, the environment and biodiversity.
11. What is LMO?
Answer:
Living Modified Organism (LMO) is a living organism that has a new combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology.
12. Are LMO and non-LMO products different?
Answer:
LMO and non-LMO products cannot be differentiated physically. LMO products can only be detected through lab testing.
13. What action will be taken on individuals/organisations who bring in LMO or its products to Malaysia without going through NBB?
Answer:
Individuals / Organisations that bring in LMOs or its products without approval from NBB will be subject to legal action under the
Biosafety Act 2007 [Act 678].
14. Incident:
Answer:
Event with a potential for causing harm.h5>
15. What is mean by preventive action?
Answer:
Action to eliminate the cause of a potential nonconformity or other undesirable potential situation.
16. What is the definition of safety?
Answer:
Freedom from unacceptable risk.
17. Toxin:
Answer:
Substance, produced by a biological system, which in small or moderate amounts produces an adverse effect in humans, animals or plants.
This definition includes substances and materials which may be contaminated with toxins (see also biohazard).
18. Inventory:
Answer:
Itemized record of stored supplies of biological agents or valuable biological materials.
19. Good microbiological techniques:
Answer:
Working methods applied to eliminate or minimise exposure to biological agents via, e.g. aerosols, splashes, and accidental inoculation.
20. Genetically modified microorganism: