Neuralink, owned by Elon Musk, is being looked into for potential dangerous transit of infected hardware

The U.S. Department of Transportation is looking into Elon Musks brain-computer interface business Neuralink for allegedly unsafely packaging and shipping contaminated hardware, a DOT spokesperson told CNBC.

The animal welfare organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine wrote to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday to inform him that it had obtained public records suggesting Neuralink may have handled devices containing infectious pathogens that posed risks to human health in 2019.

According to the letter, the devices were taken from the brains of nonhuman primates and may have been tainted with bacteria and viruses like Herpes B and Staphylococcus and Klebsiella that are resistant to antibiotics. PCRM asserted that the materials were not transported or contained properly, possibly as a result of insufficient safety training given to Neuralink employees.

Investigating alleged violations of the rules governing the transportation of hazardous materials, a DOT spokesperson told CNBC, is standard practice. Based on the data it received from PCRM, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a division of the DOT, is conducting a standard investigation to ensure compliance and the public safety of workers and the public, the spokesperson said.

One of many businesses in the developing brain-computer interface, or BCI, sector is Neuralink. BCIs enable patients to move cursors, type, and even access smart home devices using only their minds by deciphering brain signals and translating them into commands for external technologies. Devices with these capabilities have been successfully produced by numerous companies.

In 2016, Musk and a group of scientists and engineers co-founded Neuralink. Musk is also the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter. While the company hasnt tested its device on people yet, Musk has stated he hopes to do so this year. The company is developing a BCI that is intended to be inserted directly into the brain tissue.

The public records obtained by PCRM, which were reviewed by CNBC, include emails exchanged between Neuralink and the University of California, Davis. The university partnered with Neuralink between 2017 and 2020 to help the company conduct experiments on primates.

In one exchange in March of 2019, a UC Davis staffer, whose name is redacted, wrote in an email that hardware had been handled incorrectly, and the transportation of hazardous materials needed to be performed by a trained hazardous material handler.

The staffer wrote that if Neuralink employees had not completed the necessary training, UC Davis personnel were “always happy” to package and ship materials.

Ryan Merkley, director of research advocacy at PCRM, said the latest investigation by the DOT suggests Neuralink has been “sloppy in a whole new way,” he told CNBC. He said there is no evidence that anyone was infected because of exposure to the hardware, but that the concerned tone of UC Davis personnel in the emails “reflects the seriousness of this potential pathogen leak.”