Amid all the controversy surrounding BU’s biosafety lab now under construction in the South End, we haven’t heard much about the other biosafety lab that will soon be built by another local university: Tufts.
Tufts’s veterinary school received a NIH grant in 2005 to build a BSL-3 lab (BU’s will be a BSL-4 lab) on its campus in Grafton, MA, 40 miles west of Boston. Construction is scheduled to begin this summer, for occupancy in 2009.
Like Boston residents, folks in Grafton haven’t been too happy about this lab going up in their midst. But a Grafton city official told the Globe recently that the city has larger risks to deal with, like a truck carrying hazardous chemical overturning on the nearby I-90.
