RE “CDC backs BU lab for deadliest pathogens’’: The Boston University lab is in a densely populated urban area. A local citizens group has been working for more than a decade to oppose the lab’s working on the deadliest pathogens, out of fear for their own safety. This fear is justified.

The lab’s director is cited as saying that a four-and-a-half-year risk assessment study has proved that the site is safe. Assuming the site meets all the safety requirements, a deadly pathogen can still find its way into the community because of inevitable human error. There are many documented cases of escapes or inadvertent releases of pathogens from the government’s own labs. Usually this is because a pathogen was not properly inactivated; sometimes it is because of other human mistakes.

Residents of the area around the BU lab are largely minority and poor. The location of the lab in this neighborhood raises issues of economic and racial justice, as well as those of safety. BU can do good science in this lab at lower containment levels with less dangerous material.

Ann Fleck-Henderson

Cambridge