Szopa Monika, Leśków Anna, Tarnowska Małgorzata, Sarnowska Marta, Wysocki Andrzej, Pieńkowski Marek, WrzesińskiJanuszAdam. Biosafety and biological factors. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2018;8(9):973-982. eISNN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1419707 http://ojs.ukw.edu.pl/index.php/johs/article/view/5993 https://pbn.nauka.gov.pl/sedno-webapp/works/877654 The journal has had 7 points in Ministry of Science and Higher Education parametric evaluation. Part b item 1223 (26/01/2017). 1223 Journal of Education, Health and Sport eissn 2391-8306 7 © The Authors 2018; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 02.09.2018. Revised: 12.09.2018. Accepted: 15.09.2018. BIOSAFETY AND BIOLOGICAL FACTORS Monika Szopa1, Anna Leśków2, Małgorzata Tarnowska2, Marta Sarnowska3, Andrzej Wysocki1, Marek Pieńkowski1, Janusz Adam Wrzesiński4 1 Preventive Medicine Military Centre in Wroclaw, Wrocław, Poland; szopa.monika@wp.pl; andwysocki@wp.pl; m.p@wp.eu; 2 Department of Nervous System Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences, Wroclaw Medical University, Wrocław, Poland; anna.leskow@umed.wroc.pl; malgorzatatarnowskaa@gmail.com; 3 Division of Econmics and Health Care Quality, Faculty of Health Sciences, Wroclaw Medical University, Wrocław, Poland; um.marta.sarnowska@gmail.com 4 Training Center , Provincial Headquarters of the State Fire Service, Wrocław, Poland. jwrzesinski@poczta.onet.pl ABSTRACT Biological threats go beyond infectious disease epidemics. A biological threat should be construed as the effects of deployment of biological warfare or the occurrence of biological events of natural origin, which can have significant impact on the breach of security in the military, social, ecological and biological context. Biological factors are often recognized as an important and increasingly appreciated problem of widely understood public health. Epidemiological data indicates that, worldwide, at least several hundred million people are exposed to them. A fallacious conviction prevails that biological factors generally affect health care workers who are exposed to them as part of their daily professional routine. However, we rarely realize that biological factors affect us as part of many types of work, also in public spaces. Exposure to biological factors in the workplace and out of work has become increasingly frequent, leading to many adverse health effects. Health care authorities should be sensitive to the emergence of disease foci caused by biological factors (bioterrorism), which requires their quick reaction. It is also important to guarantee the security of personnel in all employment areas where contact with these factors is expected. It is estimated that the frequency of use of weapons of mass destruction is directly proportional to the availability of these means and their production costs, as well as their production capacity. These are the main reasons that indicate that a growing number of terrorist organizations can start using them. The purpose of the study is to present the current knowledge on the preparedness of government bodies (administration and health care) to fight biological threats of various origin. KEYWORDS bioterrorism; bioweapon; safety; epidemic