Facilities & Laboratories
Class-100 Clean Laboratory Facilities
The MSL has three new state-of-the-art class-100 clean-air laboratory facilities for preparation, handling and analysis of environmental samples intended for low-level trace element determinations. Positive pressures within the clean laboratories are maintained by introducing HEPA filtered air from 6 filtration units mounted in the ceiling. Within the laboratory, all casework and hoods are constructed of polypropylene or non-metallic materials to eliminate metal contamination sources. Class -100 laminar flow clean benches are utilized during all steps of sample preparation and analysis to insure sample integrity. High purity 18 mega ohm de-ionized water is fed into the laboratories from a centralized water purification system which includes reverse-osmosis pretreatment and multi-stage cation and anion demineralization. The sample preparation and handling laboratory has a class-100 laminar flow exhausting hood for conducting acid digestions of sediment and tissues under class-100 conditions. The “prep” laboratory also has an all plastic perchloric acid hood for sample digestions and two 8 ft. all plastic exhausting hoods for hot acid cleaning of laboratory ware used for sampling and analysis. The ICPMS analytical instrumentation at MSL is also housed in a class-100 clean air laboratory to minimize contamination from airborne sources.