Book:The Laboratories of Our Lives: Labs, Labs Everywhere!/Labs by industry: Part 2/Environmental

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4.4 Environmental

Environmental laboratories are responsible for the analysis and research of a wide variety of materials and environments, with the purpose of promoting human, animal, and ecosystem health. These labs also act as compliance enforcement entities for regulators. They provide services to a wide variety of other industries, including energy and utility companies, engineering firms, pharmaceutical companies, governments, and other industry forces. Environmental labs are found in the private, government, and academic sectors and provide many different services, including (but not limited to):

exposure testing^[1]
field testing^[1]
radiological testing^[2]^[3]
heavy metals testing^[1]
air quality monitoring^[1]
environmental assessments^[1]
environmental engineering^[4]

But how do environmental laboratories intersect the average person's life on a daily basis?

The easiest way environmental labs tie into the average person's life is through the potable water supply. (Though the power and utility industry, discussed later, largely deals with potable and waste water quality testing internally or through a third-part environmental lab, analyzing water quality still firmly falls into the realm of the environmental industry as well.) Without these labs, more people would become ill or even die due to improperly or non-treated drinking water supplies. We need not look further than the Flint, Michigan water crisis, where improper funding and procedures for testing and treatment of contaminated water led to the heavy metal lead leaching into the drinking water.^[5] It may be easy to take clean drinking water for granted, but remember that a lab is ideally and most likely in place to ensure it's safe for consumption in the first place.

4.4.1 Client types

Private - Private environmental labs cater to industry and the government, providing third-party testing services, often under contract.

Examples include:

Government - Government-affiliated labs not only provide analytical services for states and municipalities; they also may conduct academic and field research to better guide local, state, and federal environmental policy.

Examples include:

Academic - The environmental labs affiliated with higher education are usually researched-based, though they may occasionally provide third-party analyses. These labs are often directly affiliated with a local or even international watershed or ecosystem, providing valuable field training to students while monitoring changes to the location over time and issuing public reports.

Examples include:

4.4.2 Functions

What are the most common functions? analytical, QA/QC, research/design, and teaching

What materials, technologies, and/or aspects are being analyzed, researched, and quality controlled? acoustics, air quality, allergens, biological specimens, contaminates, finished products, hazardous waste, insects, pesticides, plants, radioactive substances, raw materials, sediment, soil, solid waste, water quality

What sciences are being applied in these labs? chemistry, chemical engineering, environmental engineering, environmental science, microbiology, organic and inorganic chemistry, radiation chemistry

What are some examples of test types and equipment?

Common test types include:

Absorption, Acute contact, Acute oral, Acute toxicity, Allergy, Anion, Antimicrobial, Atterberg limits, Bioaccumulation, Bioavailability, Bioburden, Biodegradation, Chemical and biochemical oxygen demand, Colorimetric, Conductivity, Consolidation, Contamination, Decomposition, Degradation, Density, Ecotoxicology, Emissions, Environmental fate, Environmental metabolism, Environmental monitoring, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Humidity, Hydraulic conductivity, Isotope analysis, Leak, Metallurgical analysis, Minimum bactericidal concentration, Minimum inhibitory concentration, Mobility, Organic carbon, Oxidation reduction potential, Permeability, pH, Photostability, Plant metabolism, Pressure, Proficiency, Radioactivity, Radiochemical, Refractive index, Seismic, Sensory, Soil microflora, Specific gravity, Temperature, Terrestrial toxicology, Turbidity, Wildlife toxicology

Industry-related lab equipment may include:

balance, Bunsen burner, burette, colorimeter, centrifuge, chromatographic, crucible, desiccator, dropper, enzyme immunoassay, Erlenmeyer flask, extractor, Florence flask, flow meter, fume hood, funnel, graduated cylinder, hot plate, moisture analyzer, mortar and pestle, multi-well plate, organic carbon analyzer, oven, particle counter, pH meter, pipestem triangle, reagent dispenser, remote sensors, ring stand, rotary evaporator, sediment analyzer, spectrometer, spectrophotometer, stirring rod, thermometer, viscometer

What else, if anything, is unique about the labs in the environmental industry?

"The environmental laboratory industry will be undergoing continuous radical change in coming years as environmental markets continue to evolve," stated Bangert and Lynch in a 1996 study for the National Research Council. "The model laboratory of the future, therefore, is likely to be far different from that of today," they added.^[1] Fast forward 25 years, and we see their vision for the future of environmental testing labs came to fruition: today's environmental testing lab uses a LIMS to manage data in an automated, innovative lab that provides analytical services as well as research.^[1]^[6] And they need to be agile as the concepts of "climate change," "biodiversity," and "sustainable ecosystems" continue to weave their way into the focus of environmental laboratories.^[7]^[8] As such, these labs will play an ever-increasing role in helping scientists better understand how we are impacting our environment.

4.4.3 Informatics in the environmental industry

The introduction of this section mentioned how the environmental lab serves many other industries. That becomes even more evident when we look at how informatics is being applied in those labs. Environmental researchers/laboratorians are using informatics tools to:

improve the integration and analysis of environmental data silos (such as from emissions data from a power plant) and even make it available in a collaborative way for further regional or global analysis (as with the U.S. EPA)^[9];