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Environmental Health and Safety

Environmental Health and Safety
135 Dykstra Hall
1628 Claflin Rd
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506

785-532-5856
785-532-1981 fax
safety@k-state.edu

Risk Groups

The hazard characteristics of a biological agent may be described as the ability to infect and cause disease, the severity of that disease, and the availability of effective preventative measures and treatments for that disease. Based on these characteristics, the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health developed risk groups to to classify the risk level of biological agents. These risk groups are defined in the following table:

Classification of Infectious Microorganisms by Risk Group

 Infectious Microorganisms by Risk Group

Figure 4 - from Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories [BMBL]. CDC/NIH, 5th Edition, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C