Congress demands details of CDC lab accidents

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 mistakes 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 ade- quacy of federal oversight programs.

The CDC, which operates labs spread across many buildings in multiple states, lacked a comprehensive policy for centralized reporting of lab incidents — a crucial component in identifying safety trends — until July 2015, USA TODAY has revealed. Under a new policy, incident reports are supposed to go to a newly created CDC lab safety office at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters. USA TODAY 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.