Biological hazard

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Biohazard is a shorthand term for "biological hazard". It refers to biological substances that pose a threat to (primarily) human health. This can include medical waste, samples of a virus or bacterium that can affect humans, and so forth. It is generally used as a warning, so that those potentially exposed to the substances will know to take precautions.

In Unicode, the biohazard sign is U+2623 (☣).

Levels of Biohazard

The United States' CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) categorizes various diseases in levels of biohazard; Level 1 being minimum risk and Level 4 being extreme risk.

Biohazard Level 1: Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, E. coli, varicella (chicken pox).

Biohazard Level 2: Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, salmonella, scrapie

Biohazard Level 3: anthrax, typhus, HIV, SARS, tuberculosis, BSE, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Mumps,

Biohazard Level 4: Ebola, Lassa virus, Hanta virus, Bolivian Fever, Dengue Fever and other various hemorrhagic diseases (mostly of African decent).

See also

• biological agent

External link

• "Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories" (http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/biosfty/bmbl4/bmbl4toc.htm), official CDC guide.
• "Symbol Making" (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/orsp/coms/BiosafetyResources/History-of-Biohazard-Symbol.htm), an account of the development of the symbol.ja:バイオハザード

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) Biological_hazard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hazard) version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biological_hazard&action=history) GNU Free Documentation Lizenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License) CC-by-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

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