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Biological safety cabinets designed to offer the highest degree of protection to the operator and the environment and to protect samples inside the cabinet from contamination caused by practically all known biologically hazardous agents. These cabinets typically consist of a ventilated, gastight total enclosure made of stainless steel; all operations inside the cabinet are performed under negative-pressure conditions and through attached armlength gloves. They include blowers to produce an inward vertical flow of room air into the hood and an exhaust system; the inward vertical laminar airflow is filtered by a high-efficiency particulate-air (HEPA) filter and the exhaust-air system includes two HEPA filters in series that may be followed by incineration before outside exhaustion. Access into the cabinet should be allowed only through a dunk tank or a double-door pass-through box, which may include an autoclave. All devices needed for the working process (e.g., centrifuges, incubators) must be integral to the cabinet. Class III biological safety cabinets are used to work with the most hazardous microbiological agents, including infection aerosols.
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