Analytical Services
Approximately 180 highly professional staff within the Bureau of Analytical Services provide laboratory support services to local, state and federal health care, agricultural and environmental protection agencies. The Bureau maintains a diverse test menu with over 600 methods to meet the broad needs of many programs. These methods are used to test millions of food products, animal feeds, water, soil, air, motor fuels, and human and animal tissue specimens each year. The results obtained from testing are used to make decisions to protect consumers, identify, control and eliminate infectious disease, screen for inborn errors of metabolism and other genetic disorders, ensure the quality of the food we eat, soil used to grow our crops, air we breathe and water we drink.
Teams of our scientists are also on-call 24/7, 365 days a year to provide laboratory support during emergencies such as floods, hurricanes, tornados and other natural disasters, hazardous materials and chemical spills, human and animal poisonings, and threats of the use of biological, chemical and radioactive agents associated with terrorism.
To meet the service demands described above, Analytical Services is organized into several work groups and these are described below:
- Newborn Screening Group
- Microbiology Reference Group
- Immunology and Viral Isolation Group
- Epidemiological Support Group
- Metals and Radiation Group
- Commodities, Organic Compounds, Motor Fuels and Pesticides (COMP)
- Chemical Response and Terrorism Preparedness Group
- Food, Feed, and Fertilizer Group
- Inorganic Nonmetals Group