Safety concerns at a prominent military germ lab have led the government to shut down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus.

“Research is currently on hold,” the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Fort Detrick, Md., said in a statement on Friday. The shutdown is likely to last months, Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman, said in an interview.

In the statement, the C.D.C. cited “national security reasons” as the rationale for not releasing information about its decision.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html

The institute is a biodefense center that studies germs and toxins that could be used to threaten the military or public health, and also investigates disease outbreaks.

The suspended research involves certain toxins, along with germs called select agents, which the government has determined have “the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products.” There are 67 select agents and toxins; examples include the organisms that cause Ebola, smallpox, anthrax and plague, and the poison ricin.

The new system required changes in certain procedures in the laboratories. During an inspection in June, the C.D.C. found that the new procedures were not being followed consistently. Inspectors also found mechanical problems with the chemical-based decontamination system, as well as leaks, Ms. Vander Linden said, though she added that the leaks were within the lab and not to the outside world.

Missteps have occurred at other government laboratories, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. And in 2009, research at the institute in Fort Detrick was suspended because it was storing pathogens not listed in its database. The army institute also employed Bruce E. Ivins, a microbiologist who was a leading suspect — but who was never charged — in the anthrax mailings in 2001 that killed five people. Dr. Ivins died in 2008, apparently by suicide.