Facility

The ATL is a 3200 ft² facility containing four rooms and is fully equipped to conduct various toxicant exposure and surface water monitoring studies using the US EPA three species bioassays and additional toxicity testing species.

The 642 ft² main lab is primarily used for the execution of EPA S. capricornutum experiments, data and word processing and sample preparation for Toxicity Identification Evaluation experiments. The equipment in the main lab used to conduct the EPA S. capricornutum test include two temperature and light controlled environmental chambers (32 ft³ each) for incubation, eight orbital shaker tables, two vacuum pumps for sample filtration, a Coulter Counter for the enumeration of cells, a fluorometer for chlorophyll A analysis and two compound microscopes.

The 1500 ft² wet lab is equipped with a temperature controlled 32 ft³ environmental chamber for culture, maintenance and experimentation of small fish and invertebrate experiments. A 125 ft² area is reserved for Bioassessment and contains four compound microscopes used for taxonomy. A 250 ft² section is reserved for conducting the EPA P. promelas experiments and contains two temperature controlled 29 ft² water baths and two 13.5 ft³ environmental chambers. There are also 320 ft³ of refrigerated storage with an additional 8 ft³ of explosion proof refrigerated storage. Additional equipment housed in the wet lab includes four pH meters, four electrical conductivity meters,three dissolved YSI oxygen meters, hardness and alkalinity titration stations and an autoclave.

The 280 ft² negative pressure room is is used primarily for hazardous chemical animal exposure, storage and handling and equipped with a 6 ft² fume hood and a vented, temperature controlled exposure chamber containing 14 individual tanks. In addition, a 24 ft² bench is reserved for Bioassessment and is equipped with two compound microscopes.

The 180 ft² photo period and temperature controlled room is used for the EPA C. dubia bioassays. Bench space and light boards provide space for daily water renewals and shelves provide incubation areas for the organisms.

The lab is equipped with two PC desktops, three laptops and two printers. These consist of two Gateway desktops (PII 333 mhz and Celeron 400 mhz processors), three Gateway laptops (PII 366 mhz), a Hewlett Packard laser printer and a Canon bubble jet printer. Both computers are equipped with modems. The following software is available on both computers: MS Office XP, Corel WordPerfect Suite and StatView. The laboratory is also equipped with a photocopier, fax machine and telephone.

The ATL also operates an off-site office which houses a two desktops (233 PI Gateway and Macintosh LC III, both equipped with modems), a Hewelett Packard laser printer and a telephone. The following software is available on the Mac: MS Excel 5.0, MS Word 5.0, Delta Graph, Cricket Graph, StatView and Page Maker. The following software is available on the PC: MS Office XP, Corel WordPerfect Suite and StatView.