Critics blast BU, city officials

Boston University and city officials squandered public trust and galvanized opposition to a planned high-security laboratory by waiting until this week to tell city residents that three BU researchers were infected last year with a potentially lethal bacterium in a less-secure lab, advocates and elected officials said yesterday.

"It is a public safety mistake not to tell people what danger exists," said Representative Byron Rushing, a Boston Democrat who has not opposed the proposed Biosafety Level 4 lab that will study deadly infectious diseases.

The vice chairman of the city's Zoning Commission, which last week approved locating the high-security lab in the South End, suggested that BU officials had hurt their public image by not telling the commission about the exposure to tularemia last year.

"It goes back to this issue of trust," said Robert Fondren, a Cambridge architect who chaired the Zoning Commission meeting last week. "It's easy to lose it and hard to get it back."

Some neighborhood groups have fought against the high-security lab, and members of one of the groups announced yesterday that they had sued to stop the lab. The suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court last week by members of a group called Safety Net, alleges that the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Boston University, and several state agencies violated state environmental law, which requires extensive review of the proposal. The suit alleges that BU underestimated the impact that a release of infectious material would have on the community and that city and state agencies moved forward without ensuring the law was met.

"If they really disclose the truth about what could happen in our neighborhood, the public would oppose it," said Rose Arruda, who lives near the proposed site and was among those filing suit.

Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Boston University Medical Center, said BU attorneys believe the lawsuit "is completely without merit." A spokeswoman for the BRA declined comment.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases selected BU as one of two sites nationally for secure labs to study anthrax, plague and other virulent pathogens. All that remains is final approval from the agency, which is expected. Both Fondren and a BRA spokeswoman said knowing about the tularemia exposure would not have affected the Zoning Commission's approval.

But City Councilor Chuck Turner, who represents the South End and has repeatedly proposed a city ordinance to block the lab, said yesterday that he plans to hold a hearing next month on the lack of disclosure and on BU's record of health and safety in its labs.

BU officials have said the public was never at risk from tularemia.

Rushing and Representative Gloria Fox had earlier filed a bill that would establish state safety regulations for level 4 labs, and are now considering whether to expand those proposed rules to cover existing labs, such as the one where the tularemia problem occurred.

Several critics of the biolab also blasted Mayor Thomas M. Menino's handling of the BU problems, saying he should have gone public with the problems when he learned of them last year.

"They were not forthcoming with information that is clearly important to the public," said City Councilor at Large Maura Hennigan, who is running for mayor.

Menino said he saw no need to publicize the tularemia exposure because there was no danger to the general public. "They didn't bungle it," he said of BU. "They notified officials. We saw the problem, and we put in place new procedures that will reassure us that what's going on in the labs is safe."