New England Labs Exercise Readiness for Water Contamination Incident

BOSTON (March 6, 2008) - The E.P.A.'s New England Regional Lab in Chelmsford, MA, played host to a 1st of its kind water contamination exercise last month. New England's state and federal labs and a regional water utility participated in the exercise which was deemed a success in helping to solidify the cooperation that already exists among New England's federal and state labs and water utilities.

"Practicing the collaborative roles and "mutual aid" envisioned among regional labs that would be called upon to produce all of the analytic results in the event of a drinking water contamination incident is extremely important," stated Robert W. Varney, E.P.A. Administrator of the New England Regional Office. "As we all know, you do not want to find out where our lab capabilities have run out during a real event."

E.P.A. has developed and is exercising projects that coordinate Lab support for responses to actual or suspected drinking water contamination incidents. In 2006 and 2007 E.P.A. developed drinking water Regional Lab Response Projects (RLRPs) for each of the 10 E.P.A. regions across the nation. State environmental and public health labs and representative water utility labs were active participants in the development of these plans.

This year, E.P.A. is conducting functional exercises of the RLRPs, the 1st of which was held in New England in February. These exercises are designed to simulate a response to a water contamination event involving both a biological and chemical threat agent. The exercise provided an exhaustive test of the New England Lab response project and an opportunity to test a coordinated Lab response to a water contamination event. The participating labs and water utility were asked to identify the contaminants and then to handle the surge of samples required to ascertain the extent of contamination.

In addition, the event included a simultaneous biomonitoring exercise developed by the New England state public health labs with support from the Centers for Disease Control. This adjunct exercise included analysis of clinical specimens simulating human exposure to contaminated drinking water, at the 6 New England state public health laboratories.

As a result of the exercise, the region has advanced its Lab response capabilities in order to better respond to real water contamination events for the protection of public health.

For more information about E.P.A. New England's Lab visit: http://www.epa.gov/region1/lab/index.html

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