You might not realize it, but we are exposed to dozens of hazards every day. Can any of these hazards negatively impact your health? Definitely. This is the Exposure Scientist podcast. My name is Alex Lebeau, and here, we answer your Questions and concerns on what you may be exposed to every day. Welcome to the Exposure Scientist podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered health advice. It is recommended that you consult an exposure scientist to discuss the particulars of your exposure scenario. Alright. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's podcast. And today, we're gonna be talking about environmental laboratory sample analysis and communication struggles And what you should do when you're considering engaging in analytical laboratories? And my guest today is Mark Alacentrone. I've known Mark for 15 years. So let me tell you about Mark. He is a principal consultant for the Mark Hay Consulting Group, a company he founded in 2011. And For his 30 year career, he has worked as a research chemist, a consulting chemist, and professional environmental engineer, And even an environmental mental laboratory owner and technical director. In his current role, Mark provides professional consulting services to industrial And commercial clients, legal professionals, and environmental laboratories. Mark got his bachelor of science in chemistry from Troy State 1989 and his master's in engineering in In environmental engineering from the University of South Florida. Mark is a registered professional engineer in Florida and Georgia. He's a certified hazardous material manager, And he's an active member of the Florida Society For Environmental Analysts and the NELAC Institute among other professionals. So, Mark, welcome to the program today. Thanks, Alex. I appreciate you taking the time here, and I you know, this was prompted by some conversations that Mark and I have had about analytical laboratories, the importance of, You know, relying on them and discussing with them your needs and identifying your needs as someone, an environmental professional, or someone Wanting results that are reliable and important to understand what those results actually mean. So, what I wanna do is ask Mark or have Mark present. You know? Given please give us an understanding of, the environmental laboratory sample analysis. You know, tell us about the different types of laboratory, samples that are analyzed to different types of instruments, different types of methodologies there. Kinda give us a broad overview of the when we collect the sample and send it into a lab. Now what does that collection look like? What does the sample reception look like, and what does the analytical process look like? Sure. I think it's important to to preface everything that I say by saying that I, You know, I've worked in and around environmental laboratories essentially my entire career. And, so I have been, what I like to say, a consumer and a producer of environmental analytical data, and certainly we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so if, you know, I don't ever intend to, You know, bash on laboratories or bash on engineers, but I am both. And so I feel like I'm somewhat, justified when I when I offer criticisms of of those, in as generalizations and, you know, I've probably been guilty of a lot of the the shortcomings that I may highlight at one point or another. But I think the important thing is that, You know, over 30 years, you start to get an appreciation for what goes right and what goes wrong, what can go right and what can go wrong. And oftentimes, the assumptions that are made by the people that are either collecting the samples or otherwise submitting samples for analysis, or the people that are working in the lab? We assume that the other people know what we want or what we need, and many times that's not the case because we bring different and different strengths and whatnot to the table. I guess we could start off by saying that, you know, environmental samples are analyzed often to demonstrate regulatory compliance with some standard of some kind, be it a drinking water standard or A cleanup target level in the, you know, in the traditional environmental contamination assessment and remediation field. In Florida, Any analytical results that are submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection for any regulatory purpose, must come from a laboratory that is accredited by the NILAC Institute. And the NELAC Institute, is the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Conference Institute. That's what the NELAC stands for. And that was the original, incarnation, if you will, of, an accredited set of or a a set of standards Or by which laboratories, should conduct their operations. And so now in Florida and in many other states across the country, but not all, Laboratories are accredited by TNI. And in doing so, they are essentially vetted and that they know what they're doing. They're following documented procedures. They take, efforts to make sure that when they identify deficiencies, where they're falling short of a standard, or a method in some way that they have a documented process where they identify why they've fallen short of what the standard or the method is And then conduct a root cause analysis to figure out what the problem is and then, you know, develop corrective actions so that they don't make the same mistakes over and over again. And in the whole scheme of things, what we're trying to make sure is that if my laboratory analyzes a sample and a laboratory somewhere else in the state of Florida or or somewhere else in the country, If they're running the same method and using and and conducting themselves according to the same standards, it's they're gonna get essentially the same result that I got. Because if somebody if 2 different laboratories run the same method and they get a different result, then then then there's something wrong. In other words, which which Result do we use to make the decisions that we need to make? So that that that's kind of an overview. The types of samples that, environmental laboratories analyze, can come from a variety of matrices. The matrix is something like air or water or soil or maybe a biological sample or tissues or something like that. And so breaking down even further, we could would also In the water realm, we might analyze a drinking water sample. We might analyze groundwater samples or surface water or lakes, ponds, that sort of things, or wastewater, or any other kinds of waters. And sometimes we're even asked to analyze hazardous waste or nonhazardous waste or determine whether a waste is not known to be hazardous or nonhazard, Whether it meets that criteria or not. And so this is one of the challenges that we face in the laboratories is if your laboratory If you're working with a laboratory that has a very broad scope of capabilities or scope of accreditation, they may be analyzing drinking water samples At the same time that they're analyzing hazardous waste samples. And so the the levels of contaminants that we expect to find in drinking water are often much, much lower than what we might expect to find in a concentrated hazardous waste sample. And so sometimes laboratories, you know, have to deal with those challenges where Some of the samples they get have almost nothing detectable in them, and other samples are loaded with all kinds of stuff, that that that can really complicate sort of the matters. And so those are sort of the the types of samples and the types of matrices that we, that we deal within the environmental laboratories. And I think you brought up some important information and, you know, about the accreditation. And how many or how often do you come across laboratories that May not have, certain accreditations or maybe analyzing samples where people are relying upon, know what they are reporting And they may not, meet, I'll say, certain criteria that other laboratories may be meeting. In in my practice, we don't deal I don't deal a lot. The only unaccredited laboratories that I deal with are those that are seeking to become accredited. And so we offer those consulting services to help them, be accredited. But I want to I want to, highlight the fact that just because a laboratory is accredited doesn't mean they do everything right every time. Right? It's very complex And sophisticated, you know, world that we live in, and it's not hard to to miss something or or or to trip up. And we'll get in a little bit later, I think, in talking about data integrity and ethics, but there's a big difference between when we just make a mistake, an honest mistake, And when somebody does something, you know, nefarious and then for some reason is trying to misrepresent something that was really dumb. But in terms of unaccredited laboratories, we don't deal with too many, only those that that are seeking to become accredited. And as I said, that's one of the things that we do. But but the idea of accreditation is try to get everybody at some minimum set of standards that we do everything the same way according to certain methods and standards. And then in doing so, we're trying to generate data of what we say is known and verifiable quality. That is that we're generating data that that, if we presented that data package of information to someone that was reviewing our data, they could reconstruct Or recreate everything that we did from the time the sample was collected until the time that result was reported, and so that they have some level of comfort And some level of, certainty that the sample was analyzed in a way that has been vetted, by A large population of professionals. No. That makes sense. And I think one of the things you were talking about are different types of matrices, that samples come in, and I think it's important, that, you know, there when we say environmental, I think we're talking about a very broad spectrum of types of samples. You mentioned air. You mentioned Water. And and there may be different reasons for doing it. You mentioned, like, the the Florida DEP, Department of Environmental Protection. You know, as an industrial hygienist, I may collect air samples to understand what the exposures are for an individual and send those off to, laboratories, analyzing Specifically using methods specific, for evaluation of, human, exposures in the workplace. So I think it's important to understand there are distinctions for even why you're doing the analysis and what the analysis methods are, and who's established those methods and how to interpret those results, once you receive them? Yeah. I think it's as you said, there are you know, I'm I'm Sort of focused on DEP and the Department of Environmental Protection here in Florida, but certainly Sure. For industrial hygiene, we have AIHA accredited laboratories. And and and those laboratories are running, samples according to recognized industrial hygiene methods as opposed to environmental methods or what I what I call environmental methods. And so there's certainly corollaries in the industrial hygiene world to the what I call the traditional environmental world. But but in the whole scheme of things, the idea is that When samples are analyzed and, in fact, when they're collected, that we're doing so by recognized methods and procedures that Ensure that if you collect samples in Massachusetts and I collect some in Florida that we're using the same procedures and we're using the same methods, so that we can compare those results. Because if we're not using the same methods, maybe the results aren't comparable. And just as a, you know, as an anecdotal type of thing, this is one of the things that I I think it's very interesting, and it might, you know, lead to other discussions. But, you know, we talk about, you know, global warming or or large Sets of data that go back maybe to the early 1900. And it begs the question is, how do we measure temperature, you know, in 1905 as a court as compared to how we measure it now? And are those results even comparable, but that sorta highlights some of the challenges that we face in the measurement world. No. No. You're you're you're completely right. You knew one of the Things, you know, as far as what you do in the instrumentation world, you know, the different types of instruments is like the the For those instruments to have certain detection limits or, you know, what what how low can they see? And I think that's been some of the issues, Oh, that we've observed, let's say, for PFAS where, you know, originally, we could see one level, but as technology has gotten better, we could see lower and lower and determine that They are detectable at the lower those lower levels as well as well. Whereas previously, we didn't see them because we couldn't the interpretation Just had limitations. Right. And even and even today, one of the things that laboratories, struggle with or are challenged by is that sometimes these allowable levels For PFOS and other types of compounds, you know, like dioxin and things like that, the the toxicology based level that's okay if there's such a thing for us to Consumer be exposed to maybe well, well, well orders of magnitude below what our current technology allows us to detect. And so laboratories get criticized sometimes because they say, well, the allowable level is, you know, 1 part per quadrillion, But the laboratory cannot has the methods are only sensitive enough to see 1 part per 1,000,000,000. And so we have to understand that sometimes We just don't have enough technology. Your technology isn't advanced or sophisticated enough to get as low as we need to demonstrate That we are compliant with some toxicology or some other based, you know, level. No. I I think we'll get into that later about, you know, the importance of communicating Tory, but I think that's completely correct. As you know, there there are everyone has different thresholds that we're looking at and and getting on the same page of What are what a toxicologist or industrial hygienist goal is versus what a remediation or laboratory goal may be for identification may be 2 separate things. So I I know we're talking about, the methodologies and the basic sample matrices and and the mechanics and the instrumentation. But I wanted to talk about, you know, the importance of the as you brought up earlier, accurate environmental testing, you know, making sure that the results, if we're sending something in, the results that we're actually getting, are are are, I'll say, a meaningful result The the that they are accurate, reproducible, etcetera. Could you talk a little more, about that? Sure. Absolutely. I mean, I think There's 2 sort of fundamental concepts that we talk about in any measurement, realm, and, of course, environmental laboratories is no difference. But it's the idea of, you know, What is accuracy and what is precision? Right? Accuracy, by a laboratory definition is the degree of agreement Between an observed value and an accepted reference value. Right? And it includes a combination of random error, and systematic error components that are due to sampling and biological Operations and certainly accuracy is a data quality indicator. Precision on the other hand is a degree to which a set of observations or measurements kind of agree with each other, obtained under similar conditions, and conform to themselves, and it's another data quality indicator. So precision is usually exposure, course of standard deviation or variance or range, any of their absolute or relative terms. But the idea of having an accurate value It's easy to assess when we have a standard or reference. Right? If I if I'm in the laboratory and I wanna analyze a standard that I know is ten Micrograms per liter or 10 parts per billion because I created it. It's easy for me to assess whether I'm close to the result or not. Right? If I run that 10 part per billion standard And I get a result of 9.5 parts per 1000000000 or 10.7 parts per 1000000000 depending on the the the precision of the method. Those might be very good. And oftentimes, Those kinds of results are good. Those are accurate. The question is when I'm running a sample that I don't know what the real answer is. Right? I'm getting a sample of soil From some site that's contaminated, I don't know what the real answer is, and so it's hard for me to assess whether I got it right or whether I got the result accurate and whether I have an accurate result. So that's why we run the standards that we run to make sure that if I get 1, if I have an accurate result on something that I know what the concentration is And I run everything the same on that unknown, then I can take some comfort in the fact that that result ought to be accurate. And that's why we run All the quality control samples that we run, when we run any kind of sample in an accredited lab, that's what we're trying to do. So and, of course, you know, many times, especially in the environmental, arena, if we're dealing with the cleanup of a hazardous waste site or something like that, It's really critical that our results are accurate because if we're gonna spend lots and lots of money and lots and lots of time trying to clean up a site, we're basing those decisions on results that we, certainly hope and infer are accurate, and that's very important in that regard. Right. We don't wanna spend all that money, and spend all that time cleaning up a site if the results we're getting from the laboratory or from our sampling efforts are truly representative of what's really present in that at that site, in the soil at that site or the water or the groundwater or whatever it is. Sure. So one thing that I have seen, and and and I'll get your input here and thoughts on it is, you know, when you you may have a site, let's just say hypothetical site, and you have, there may be multiple interested parties, whether there's a lawsuit involved or some kind of, DEP or some type of environmental regulatory process involved, then you may have different consultants and those consultants may send samples to different laboratories. And you may have, you know, the the whole goal obviously is to ensure that they're using the same methodologies. But can you discuss, you know, what what happens or what is a thought process on what to do, when you are seeing, You know, if you submit samples that maybe you're you're you're you're taking, like a split sample, from an area and 1 lab result reports one result And one is a different result and it's completely different, even though they may have used the same methodologies. What would you do in that scenario, or how would you Evaluate that to kinda give a better understanding of again, your if you have a goal of understanding what the remediation process is or a site exposure, it's some etcetera, You know, how are you looking at that split and saying, okay. Well, why is this one so far off, or which one is the accurate? Sure. Absolutely. You know, when when you have it's sort of a rare event when you have 2 results from different laboratories on the same sample. We see that a lot in the due diligence world where where we might be working for a company or a a an organization that wants to acquire a property, and we're doing a due diligence investigation to try to whether the property is contaminated or not. And many times, the buyer will retain a company like ours to go in and do some assessment of the property to determine whether it's contaminated or not. And many times when we're getting ready to collect those samples, the seller would say, hey. I wanna know what your, you know, what your result is. And so they might collect a split sample as you mentioned earlier And send that to a laboratory that they have retained that's separate and apart from the laboratory that we representing the buyer, may have obtained. So when we have that, obviously, we compare the results, And we see what they are. In those instances where those results are are are drastically different or or statistically different in some way, What we do is we want to look at the laboratory's data packet that goes towards generating that result. Right? We're gonna ask the laboratories, give us all the raw data that you have That allowed us that allowed you to report the result that you reported. And we'll compare those data packages to make sure that they comply with the standards of TNI or any other applicable body if it's AIHA, if it's an industrial hygiene type setup. We wanna make sure that everything was done the way it's supposed to be done according to the accrediting body and the accreditation standards. And then we're gonna look at each method and make sure that the the way they prepared the samples and the way they analyze the samples Meets the requirements of the method. And it's it's a rare case that we don't find some issue in those data packages that helps us to explain why 1 laboratory got a different result, than the other laboratory. And then taking it 1 step further, we can look at those data packages and decide this is the the result that we think is the best and the most accurate result based on all that backup documentation. And, certainly, if there are gaps In one of those data packages that don't allow us to recreate the result, then that on the surface leads us to question whether or not an actual sample was analyzed properly. Right. So along and thank you for that info. I I think that's important, because I think that that that is probably encountered more often than people may Think. Even maybe, you know, there I've I've seen instances where, they're using 1 laboratory and industrial, something happens where the laboratory, can no longer analyze the samples due to a mechanical breakdown or some issue, and they have to find a second lab or something to do it, and results are are drastically different. So then you have to get into the area. Okay. Why are they different? What's going on? You know, you say you're using the same methodology, but things don't seem right. So that means you have to sit down and say, okay. Where is the problem, and and how could we correct this? Because now you have data that you have to explain, You know, and and and and say why something was wrong with it and why it is not reliable, which is I think is a a a harder burden sometimes to get over, than just, you know, having repeatability or or using 1 laboratory, for the understanding and knowing what that laboratory can do for you. Sure. I think, just one thing that that that is interesting and it it may be a tangent, and if it is, we can we can go on to something else. But, you know, for instance, the the drinking water standard for Benzene. Right? Known carcinogen. The drinking water standard is 1 microgram per liter or 1 part per billion. You can imagine sending that same sample of drinking water to 2 different laboratories, and 1 laboratory might come up with a result that's, You know, 0.97 micrograms per liter, right, which is below, technically, the drinking water standard. And another lab might result that's maybe 1.04 micrograms per liter, parts per billion, and that would be, you know, on the surface above the drinking water standard. And the question becomes is, You know, which result do you use? Is that variability outside some statistically defensible range, or is that reasonable? And what we find is that That's very reasonable. We see it all the time. Right? And so the question then goes to what is the regulatory standard and and and how do you assess that? And I can tell you, as much as, you know, we engineers and scientist, like to have black and white standards, and this is, you know, this is too much This is too little, and it's hard and set in stone. You know, depending on where you work and and and and and who your regulators are, Some might say those results, you know, 0.97 and 1.04 are different. And some regulators in a different district different area or different region of EPA, whatever might say, well, no. Those are the same. You know? If we if we're reporting to 1, you know, significant figure, they're both 1. And so that's one of the questions too. And that's a different that's a different discussion and a different conversation and, dare I say, a different debate than if you have drastically different results, from 2 different labs, you go through that purpose. And, you know, part of what we do sometimes is try to make sense of those results and help people to to to realize that it's really the same number, within the realm of statistics that we deal with. No. And I think that's an important point. And and and to take that further, even, you know, they're, Again, depending on the district or who the regulator is, you may they may say, well, why don't you average those 2 together? Alright. Well, the average is 1. Alright. So that everything's fine. You know, so but it is very as you said, it is very dependent on the scenario that you're facing because it could be you know, you can have something like you said as a very much The stickler or the reg regulation doesn't allow any flexibility and you're stuck, or you have to understand it, or or you may have that flexibility. And so These are the things that I think we've all faced, but I think it's important to understand what we do face, when we when we're collecting and analyzing the samples. You brought up one thing earlier that I'd like to maybe address a little bit. You know, the analytical methodology is important, but I think, you know, discussion of this, The sample sample handling as well. So you brought up, you know, the potential if you're doing a phase one and you have someone say, oh, let me grab a sample of that. You know, does that you know, how do you view that, or how does you take that into consideration as someone who knows how to collect samples or send them Under certain way, under chain of custody procedures, for traceability, versus someone who just says, let me go get, you know, a mason jar and stick some dirt in there and Send it off Sure. That may not have any previous experience collecting samples. Yeah. I think that's a great point. One of the things that frustrates the accredited laboratories is that, at least in the state of Florida and to my knowledge in the in the in the entire country, There's no requirement that you follow any sort of, let me let me rephrase that. There is a requirement that you follow standard operating procedures, But there's no requirement to demonstrate that you do that on a regular basis to the level of scrutiny that we do in the accredited laboratory world. In the accredited laboratory world, we're required to do an internal audit of our operations once a year at least once a year. And then we have A third party outside body come in and do an on-site assessment of our laboratory, every 2 years. And so somebody's always looking at our data, Always looking at our files, always looking at everything to make sure that we're doing everything the way it needs to be done. There is no requirement corollary for sampling. And so while in Florida, when we collect a sample, we we're if we're doing it for a a compliance purpose in the DEP realm, the Department of Environmental Protection, We have to attest that we collected the sample according to the DEP standard operating procedures, and we're fortunate in Florida because they have developed standard operating procedures for sample collection It cover just about every environmental matrix you might think of and every situation you might think of. But there's no requirement. There's no audits that are done On a standardized periodic basis of those sampling operations and what the labs get frustrated with is you can kinda do anything you want in the field, But as soon as the sample comes in the door of the laboratory, we have all these requirements and all these standards and all these methods and everything we have to document and all that sort of stuff. And when the result comes up unexpected and the laboratory reports an unexpected result, the first thing everybody says is, oh, the lab screwed it up. Right? Because we can look at all their data. We can find where they skip They probably miss something, and rarely do we have that level of detail on the sampling procedures. Right? And so It's frustrating for laboratories that we have to do all this stuff, but the sample collection people can kinda do whatever they want and say, well, we did it according to the SOPs whether they really did or not. But I always say in in in the groups that I talk with is sample collection is at least as important, if not more important than what the laboratory does, And there's nothing we could do in the laboratory to improve the quality of the sample or improve the quality of the data if the sample wasn't collected properly. And I'll and I'll add this. And just to to emphasize, Mark used to own a laboratory, so he understands the frustrations in going through this Because he's been there. He's firsthand exposure to that, which is while he's knowledgeable in this area and can apply his previous experiences to say, This is where we've already had problems before. I know where to look for it. Along those lines, as far as laboratory process, you know, what are some Challenges that environmental laboratories face, from samples. You know, we talked about, we we talked about sample The submissions and collection, what about, internally, beyond just the, I'll I'll say the credit cardation process, what are some internal challenges that laboratories may face? So I think it's important to to differentiate the types of environmental laboratories. Right? We Sometimes the environmental laboratory is at a wastewater treatment plant or water treatment plant. Right? And they're analyzing that drinking water, the wastewater Coming in, sometimes it's so they can adjust the treatment parameters to make sure that they're treating that water properly. But in the municipal world, we don't really have a a a profit motive. Right? I mean, that just it you know? So so in my experience most water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants, you know, are just trying to do things the right way. Right? And while, sure, they can't be frivolous with Taxpayer money that they're using. The idea that we have to analyze so many samples in a in a in a certain period of time and and make a and all that sort of stuff doesn't isn't really a pressure that I've seen in the water and wastewater treatment plant laboratories. And so in those scenarios, the challenges that they face are just trying to, You know, they're running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and, you know, they're just trying to do the best they can to make sure that they get those results right. And that can be, you know, that can be a challenge in and of itself. You know, there may be limited resources in in in some smaller municipalities. They may not be able to have all the latest and greatest equipment and maybe they're using, you know, older equipment and that sort of stuff. And, of course, the older the instrumentation is, the more difficult or more challenging it can be to maintain that instrumentation and Keep it operating properly and, you know, you may run into a situation where you've got an instrument that's sold that you can't get parts for it anymore if something goes wrong. Or, You know, you may be running a version of a software that's only compatible with a version, an operating system that existed 10 years ago. And, you know, as a point in our laboratory, we had, an instrument where we analyze metals. And every time we try to upgrade the operating system on the the workstation that ran that instrument, it would break the software that ran the instrument, and so we'd have to roll it back to the previous version of Software. So sometimes that's a challenge where where where you're not in a commercial setting. In a commercial setting, which is really what my background is in a commercial environmental laboratory, You're there's just pricing pressures all the time. Right? In the mid nineties, when we were analyzing water samples, groundwater samples for BTEX and MTBE, which is benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, and MTBE common sort of gas station type, contaminants. We're getting a $120 a sample. This is in the mid nineties. Today, their laboratory is doing those samples for $30. And so what we find is that labs or environmental chemical laboratories are constantly under pressure to do more with less money, per sample, less revenue. And that's one of the biggest challenges that we see, in the in the in the environmental world. It's increasing pricing Pricing pressures, which resulting in smaller margins, and then the labs are limited in their ability to attract, you know, talented, you know, staff Members and and talented analysts and technicians and all that sort of stuff, keep their instrumentation, you know, up to speed and properly, working and, You know, be able to afford the latest and greatest, technology, and instrumentation and that sort of stuff. And and so that's one of the things that we really find, No. As a as a challenge another challenge, I think, is that that it's important for, anybody that's submitting samples to environmental laboratories. Many times, the technicians and the analysts think, you know, this is what they do. They work at the bench. They're analyzing these samples, but they don't really or might not have an appreciation for what that result means. Right? They're just they're running hundreds of samples, you know, a week or maybe thousands of samples a week. And all these samples start to look the same, and maybe you're not assessing each result, for whether it makes sense or whether it it's it's useful to the decision makers. Right? And so those people may just not have any idea what that result means and don't know when something doesn't look right. Right? And it's it's not until the data user gets it and looks at it and says there's something not right here that that it becomes evident. And so sometimes laboratories are are are are challenged to make sure that the results that they issue Are useful in some way and not, you know, meaningless because, you know, maybe the the maybe the criteria is 1 part per billion, And the laboratory reports a result of less than 10 parts per 1,000,000. Well, as a data user, that doesn't do me any good. I can't demonstrate compliance with a 1 part per billion Standard if the result that's reported to me is just simply less than 10. Right? I can't I don't know if that's over 1 or Torys don't have an appreciation for the fact that I need to know whether it's less than 1, and that goes to this whole, you know, idea of our of our talk today, which is Communicating to the laboratory what it is that you need. If you need a detection limit of 1 part per billion, communicate that to the laboratory. Let them know. Make sure that they have Knowledge of that so they can help you determine what analytical method or what procedure would be appropriate for your means. Because when we're analyzing a hazardous waste sample, 1 part per billion, we don't really care. We're we're in the part per million range or higher in hazardous waste sample. But in the drinking water world, we need to know sometimes whether that 1 part per billion, is our critical number for decision making purposes. And, you know, the challenge this is one of the challenges that laboratories have. Sometimes they don't even know they have it, and that is, are we reporting results that are useful for the decision makers that are gonna take our report and do something with that information? I think you brought up some interesting points, and this all I'll I'll I'll have a few comments so we can have a discussions about it. One thing that I have noticed Anecdotally in my practice, and you've probably seen it as well, is there's been a lot of acquisition of laboratories. There have been Larger laboratory groups are operate under the umbrella of a laboratory group that are buying up smaller laboratories, and it may be where You had a relationship with that smaller lab and they understood your needs and everything else, and then they get acquired by one of these larger organizations. And Either the people who are there are not happy with the acquisition and they leave, or they're under pressure from that new group, to, as you said, Almost like a commodity based work, you know, just just high volume, low cost kind of thing, which makes it difficult Because, you know, I I prefer to work with the small groups, but lately, in the past couple years, I would call up and say, oh, we our new name is this. We are acquired by this group or, you know, we no longer have that offering or have that capability even because sometimes I've even scientist where, you know, the all the laboratory will be bought up and say, oh, we don't do that here anymore under the umbrella of whoever they are. They do that out of this state now. So, you know, I I I had reliability on them from previous experience where now I'm presuming I have a same reliability, but I'm gonna we'll give a little Scrutiny with the result comes from a different place than I'm normally used to getting it from. Yeah. No doubt. I think, you know, we talk about in the types of instruments that are in laboratories, and we have, you know, gas chromatographs, and we have GC mass specs, mass spectrometers. We have, you know, atomic absorption, spectrophotometers, ICPs, or inductively, all these different things. Right? But at the end of the day, I think it's important to recognize that the most important instrument that any laboratory has Is the people. Right? People that care, people that know what the what the results are, being used for And have an appreciation for whether that data is useful or not. And I think it's important to establish, you know, a personal relationship with the folks in the laboratories or the that you're using, so that if you have a question or you have a concern, you can go to a person that you trust and you know and you have an established relationship with and say, look. It appears there was a problem with this analysis. You know, tell me tell me what went on. Tell me what happened. I realized that, you know, it's never perfect, And it it but it just has to be good enough sometimes. But you wanna work with a laboratory that's not afraid to tell you, look. We had an issue. Right. We had an issue with your sample, and something went wrong. If if you're working with a lab that refuses to say, hey. We screwed this up. You have to be you have to be a little bit skeptical because you never know when you're getting, you know, the the the result that's Credited and and and reliable, and when you're getting a result, it's not. Exposure science covers a broad subject area, including toxicology, industrial hygiene, and risk Assessment. From occupational, community, or environmental exposure, exposure scientists apply scientific methodologies to understand exposure risks And apply controls when necessary. We at Exposure Assessment Consulting have this expertise. Please reach out to us at info@exposureconsulting.com for a free 15 minute consultation to discuss the specifics of your exposure scenario. I I agree, and I'll I'll, again, I'll talk about the experience I have, and then communication is the imp very important. And, You know, one time I had exposure where I was talking to one of their technical directors and they said, oh, we can do this for you. You know, I'll get it set up. I'll get you the media out, etcetera, based on because the it was a it was a unique scenario where I needed something analyzed that was a non typical way, but they could do it me, they said, you know, they talk to the laboratory manager and everything else. Well, I submitted my samples and I came back and the results were not what I was expecting. And, You know, this is the point of communication that's important is I was talking to the technical director. The technical director indicated that he was talking to the The laboratory manager. But the laboratory manager, there's something something was not right. There was a a miscommunication point because they were said, oh, We didn't get that information, so we couldn't do that for you. Even though my chain of custody said I wanted this, you know, no one called and said, Something's wrong. We can't do this. You may need to, you know, let let's put a stop right here. And there is no thought to go forward, and then that's, again, building that relationship. That's the point of Frustration. I I wanna know if there's an issue because that helps me later on, especially if if it's a legal case or something like that where I can't go back and get a sample Or, you know, my time is very limited. Sometimes, you know, again, if it's a legal case, you know, you have a site inspection at one particular time to get access again is A huge barrier. So, you know, making sure that everyone, not only the technical director or laboratory manager, even the person on the bench knows What the goal is, and if they can't meet that goal saying, let's figure this out right now. I think that's very important. Yeah. It's it it, You know, it's interesting because, you know, I've I've analyzed lots and lots of samples myself. And, of course, now I don't do that, but but there are many times that I wanna talk To the guy or the gal that's at the bench level and say, look. I know this is a challenging matrix to analyze. Let me tell you how we used to do it. But I don't I I I can never get to that person. Right? And so I have to explain it to usually the salesperson. Right? And then the salesperson, of course, You know, maybe their level of knowledge and and their motivators in trying to get the work is a lot different than the person who's actually analyzing the sample. But, you know, one case in point is, sometimes we analyze or we are trying to characterize waste as hazardous or nonhazardous. And one of the more common streams waste streams that we see in my practice are the is the residue from aerosol cans and industrial Facilities. Right? Parts cleaners, you know, any kind of, you know, liquid wrench or anything like this that they use. You know, many times what happens is the facility will puncture those cans when they're empty, and but there's still some residue left In that can, that can goes into a drum. And when that drum or bucket or whatever it is becomes full, they wanna know if it's a hazardous waste or not. Well, that's, you know, a highly concentrated organic stream, and we're looking for, you know, parts per million or milligram per liter level concentrations In a highly concentrated organic matrix and to be able to communicate to somebody, here's the way that we can analyze it so you have the best shot getting some useful information, is is critical in those circumstances, but it's a but it's a challenge. It's it's a challenge to get to the people that you want to. It's like, You wanna say, hey. Let me let me show you how you can do this. But that person is, you know, many times by choice, Buried in the in in the bowels of the lab somewhere, you know, working at a branch, and they don't they don't wanna talk with people. They don't wanna deal with people. They just wanna analyze their samples. No. No. It it is. It's very chemical. And, I'll say again, you know and and I'll be honest. You know? The company I work used to work for would you know, you know, would send samples over to Mark, I I get to take a look samples over to the lab, but I think we had a great communication line. You know, if there's an issue, let me know, or I'd say, hey. This this is something that happened. Let me know if you see any issues, because that that that communication is important. But if you're shipping samples across the country, because of their laboratory locations, and you can't talk to the people at the bench top and say, listen. You know, even so far as to say and and this is a very non Technical term, but if I send something in and I'd be like, for some reason, this sample is sticky. Yeah. You need to know that there's something viscous in here that may cause Sure. I can't get that to those people. So I think that's a that's that's a that's if you find a lab where you can Have some communication or get it to them or know that it's gotten to the people who are performing the analysis that's important. But, again, as you said, keeping those people around is difficult, because of sometimes how overworked they are, and keeping the good people around. They just say, you know, I I I this is too much from what it used to be. Like you said, you know, these things are different 20 years ago. Yeah. I mean, you know, owning an analytical laboratory was a lot of fun, you know, but it but the most fun is when you can make a profit and do it for a living and, you know, you get to do something that you really enjoy. If you can make enough money to feed your family, well, that's, you know, that's great. And, you know, one of the reasons that I don't own a lab and I don't work in a lab anymore is because of those price pressures that I was Talking about previously. And it's it it's tough, and I you know, my my I I am sympathetic to the folks that are working, and owning laboratories today because it's just, you know, the the requirements of what we're what laboratories are required to do have increased exponentially since the mid nineties, and the costs are what you can what you can, you know, charge somebody to analyze those samples has gone down exponentially. And so you've got more stringent requirements and smaller margins, and it just it it it creates lots of challenges, for those laboratories. But what I would suggest is that if you If you do have a sample that's difficult in some way to analyze or you anticipate it's difficult and you're submitting it to the laboratory, you know, send in some supplemental documentation along when you submit those samples. You know, put it on the chain of custody. Hey. This sample may have some detergents in it, and so it's gonna foam. So if you put it into an analytical system where you're gonna purge or sparge that sample, know that you could have some foam, you know, coming up into the, you know, the analytical system, and it could foul your results or, you screw your system up or do something like that. Try your best to communicate that in it. If you can do it verbally, that's great. If you have to, you know, put it on that chain put it in some supplemental documentation that goes along to the lab. You know, labs would love to see that sort of extra information. It makes their lives easier because If we're running a, you know, a a a volatile sample of some kind of liquid and it's gonna foam, you know, the fundamental process of volatiles analysis is many times As we are purging, you know, something out of those liquid samples, and if it foams, it can go up into the instrument and cause all kinds of issues. And, You know, the last thing a laboratory wants to do is to shut down one of their instruments so they can do some maintenance because now they can't analyze samples. They can't generate revenue. They're falling behind. We have holding times on this stuff, and so things could expire. And the last thing a commercial environmental laboratory wants to do is send a sample to one of their competitors to analyze, because their system's down. Right? And we don't wanna have to do that if we can help it. But, you know, it's it's important going to the point of relationships that you're talking about. It is important for, you know, us to have relationships with other laboratories, so that we can collaborate and say, hey. You know, we have a really hard time analyzing the sample. Is there anything in your lab that that you've done that works, on these types of samples. And so there's organizations, you know, here in Florida and elsewhere, when we get together and talk about these kinds of things and and and try to come up with strategies to help us all do better work. I think those are great recommendations. Thank you. Appreciate it. So along those lines of Of good instrumentation and good communication is the importance of, you know, if if you were to identify a lab that Is communicating well and and and does other things well. What other things should you look at, as far as a, not only clear and transparency, but, you know, good processes. You talked about having standard operating procedures, and you discussed standards earlier. Can you talk about, like, the Quality assurance, quality control issues, that laboratories face and how a good laboratory would, approach and be proactive, for those problems. Absolutely. I mean, You know, I mentioned earlier that we have, you know, in the t and I accredit accredited world, you know, we have to do internal audits On an annual basis, which is where we, members of the laboratory staff, typically, the technical director and the quality assurance officer or quality assurance manager, Goes through every method, every every procedure, everything that we do in the lab, and we're looking for areas where we're falling short of what we are supposed to be doing. And, again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just the idea of doing these audits is trying to identify areas where we're falling short of the standards. And many times, you know, they're they're in in almost every method in an accredited lab, there are quality control limits or quality assurance, you know, practices that help us to determine whether or not the analysis, you know, meets the criteria of what is required. And so I think it's important to know that, you know, in many cases, the laboratory has flexibility to generate their in house quality control limits for recovery. Right? So recovery is a it it is a description of accuracy. And so for instance, if we if we create A quality control sample that has 10 parts per 1,000,000,000 of something in it, and we analyze that sample and we get 9.7 parts per 1,000,000,000 at the end of the analysis, Then we say that was a 97% recovery or 97% accuracy. Right? And so, you know, if any of us that ever went to any kind of school, ninety 7's pretty doggone good. Right? And a 102, you know, is is just as well. I've had people ask me. They said, well, how can you get a 102% recovery? I mean, you're creating matter. Right? I mean, if there's a 102% recovery, how can you ever have more than a 100%. Right? And, you know, it's like getting extra credit on the, you know, on the test you took in high school or what have you. But but but the idea is that there's a range of variability in those analysis, And and and we hold ourselves to those criteria. It's interesting to note that, again, as I said, you know, 97% is good, really good, and a 102% is really good don't know what you do, but sometimes in the analytical world, you know, an acceptable limit of recovery for a standard might be something like 2 to a 120%. Sounds outrageous. Right? 2% recovery. How can that ever be good enough? But there are some analytes, particularly in the semivolatiles world, that are challenging to analyze. They can break down, in your analytical system if there's any any little bit of, of interferences. You know, we run Hundreds of samples through an analytical system. Over time, that system gets a little bit dirty, for lack of a better word, and we need to do maintenance to clean it up again. Sometimes those active, components of the analytical system can cause an analyte to degrade, or breakdown in the analytical system. And and sometimes there are things there are other tar there are other analytes contaminants in a sample that react with something that we're looking for and cause it to break down. It's just mother nature. It's not that we're doing anything wrong. It's just it's just the way of the world. And so sometimes you have to recognize that 2% recovery is is as good as we can do. But but but it's important to to know that, you know, 2% recovery sounds awful, you know, to anybody, a layperson that's never dealt with this. But sometimes that's as good as we can hope for. And, you know, we have to have an understanding of those things, and it's important for the laboratory to communicate to you that, hey. 3% as good as we can do. If the laboratory has some information about why we only got 3% recovery, encourage the laboratory to be forthcoming and with that information in a case narrative in that analytical report or or something like that so that you can have an understanding. Because, you know, at the end of the day, as a consultant, You know, we have some awareness and some familiarity with why, you know, 3 or 4% recovery might be okay, but our clients may not Be able to make sense of that. And so sometimes it's helped with the laboratory will communicate. Hey. This is a common thing that we see with this particular analyte. It breaks down, in nature, it also breaks down in analytical systems because of the heat that we might be using or something like that. And so being able to communicate those issues, to the folks that are submitting the samples as well as maybe their clients is important, for laboratories to do. And and, you know, as scientists and engineers and, you know, toxicologists, sometimes we get a bad rap because we're not really good. We may not be really good at communicating. Right? We're We're kinda maybe, you know, we get criticized because we're book smart, you know, and we're not real good at dealing with people and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, You know, people are or or or what makes it work. And if you can find a laboratory that is good at communicating these sorts of things to you And helping you to communicate these things to your clients, that that goes a long way. And sometimes it's, you know, it's the general public at a water treatment plant. You know? Many of us get in the mail once a year, some, summary of, exceedances that our water, You know, plant had with some particular analytes in the drinking water that we have at our house. And being able to communicate those things and make sense and not create this Scare of, oh my goodness. I can't believe there was, you know, a little bit of lead in my drinking water. You know, being able to understand those and and put them in context is It's hugely important in in everything that we do. No. I I completely agree, and I, you know, One of the, I'll say, I think, failures of of and highlighted over the past couple years is the, the communication aspects of what do from a public health perspective or a risk communication of, you know, what do these things actually mean to people? You know, if I'm a layperson, I'm seeing this, as you said, the water quality reports that come out annually. What do those numbers mean? You know, I If I do see exceedances in lead for a month or a few, you know, a few reporting or the averages or the min max, does that mean that I'm at an increased risk For any problems? Well, no. It is averaged, you know, over these many days. I don't think that all the time, I and I'll say some districts are better than others that I have seen as Water quality reports of explaining what those values mean, how many samples were collected, you know, what is the averaging time, you know, because, I've seen it where sometimes where they report it, but you dig into the data and, oops, we missed we we missed 7 or 8 of the 12 months for this year, and those are actually an average of 5 samples, not 12 samples. And I don't think that is communicated very well, in some of these aspects, I think that's, as you said, that's very important. Additionally, you know, from putting on my toxicology hat, You know, when we're looking at doing animal studies or something and recoveries, as you were mentioning, are are important because if we're challenging animals or Moles are challenging like a mechanistic type of, assay. We need to understand what the what the target Forget analyte is within that with a certain amount of recovery. Are we making sure that the analyte is still in that material? Is it breaking down? Are the samples that the laboratory is analyzing or they have using the correct positive, controls, to or spiking it just to make sure that they are getting the actual recovery because if we're challenging animals with this, we wanna make sure that nothing has changed over time or it's still there. Because if If it's a a year long bioassay on animals and it's only present for 6 months, you're just giving them feed for 6 months. You're giving them the vehicle for 6 months. So, you know, understanding again, that goes back in communication. Have the laboratory or have the contract research organization that you may be working with that may be Tracking that out to another laboratory. I've seen that as well. You know? Say, we've got a problem. Get in early on the problem, because if if you wait till the end, lots of people will be upset. And I I and and, of course, the laboratory is gonna go, well, this is you know, We we did and and I'll I wanna say this across the all labs, but I I'll say some of it is like, we did what we were asked to do. Sometimes you have to go above and beyond what you're asked to do and have Communications. So and and again, it and, not all laboratories are made the same, I'll say. There there are great ones and there are okay ones. And I think Making sure you understand what those limitations are, like you said, for the 2% recovery. Tell clients right away. Hey. We can't get this. You know, this is where the result you're gonna be. Sometimes you may have to put it in writing. Just send them an email. This is what we can do for you So they don't come back later on because I'll see I'll see people from my side go, well, you didn't tell me I could do that. I I wrote it in an email. You know? So Yeah. I'd like to get your thoughts on that and, you know, you know, making sure that the laboratory is covered as well, from your side. Yeah. I mean, I think A couple things that I think are important, you know, to to to think about is, you know, the the the the health based standards, that we have in drinking in drinking water, excuse me, and and and other other matrices. You know, we hope they take into consideration the variability and the limitations and all that sort of stuff. Right? And you can speak to this a lot better than I can. But, you know, what are the safety factors that are built into that 1 part per 1000000000 standard for benzene? And and if a laboratory reports, You know, 1.04, does that mean it's over the standard, and do we have a problem? Right? Or or or or does it not mean we have a problem? It's important to recognize that, You know, the analysis of a sample, that sample is a point in time. Right? And you get that report from the from the water, from the drinking water authority wherever wherever you live, and they say this is the average concentration we had over the course of the past year of of this particular contaminant. But it may be that that that that's an average and that you you you didn't drink the water on the day when they had that hit or, You know, what what they analyze at this at the plant isn't what was at your tap. You know? And Correct. All kinds of variability in there. And so we just hope that all those All those things are taken into account, when we have these standards and we do these analyses and and and that sort of stuff. So for strategies for, I'll say, improving, any addressing any, deficiencies or improving, the methodologies. We talked about increasing communication with laboratories. We talked about, you know, making sure that they are accredited to the laboratories and understanding the limitations. Do you have any strategies for, I'll I'll just say, you know, based on the information that we've presented today for someone to say, okay. Well, let me let me go assess Where the labs that I use are now and understand where they are and maybe areas where I can work on a proven either my relationship with them or How they analyze by samples or how I can, you know, ensure that the reliability of my samples is maintained. Yeah. It can be a challenge because we you know, it's just, I think, human nature that we don't wanna we don't wanna, you know, offer up where we're falling short of of what we're supposed to do. Right? Not just laboratories, but, you know, being a good person or anything else. Right? Yeah. And and and so having that open line of communication As a data user and communicating to the laboratory, look, I'm not gonna criticize you for doing something wrong or or getting a result or or Skipping over a step I want you to communicate that with me. I want to know what the weaknesses are in my data. Right. If if if I if if you report a result to me, but something's not right with that result, I wanna know that. And and and a a a a it it's wise to scrutinize these analytical laboratory reports that you get, from the environmental labs that you work with. They should be reporting the quality assurance and the quality control data. And if you're lucky, the report will have enough information to allow you to assess whether that how much you can rely on that result, Whether you might expect that result to be, somewhat questionable or, you know, that the laboratory had it's not that they did anything wrong, but the matrix is is is very challenging one reason or another, but you want, again, you want the laboratory to be, comfortable explaining to you when when when they fall short of something And and being forthcoming with that information. You know, in in in terms of how the laboratories, identify their deficiencies and improve what they do and how they do it, as I mentioned a couple times now, we have to do audits of our laboratory operations. And those those audits identify where we're falling short of a standard. We're fortunate in that that the accreditation body has has developed, standards that that tell us how to identify deficiencies And how we rectify those deficiencies and what we need to do to fix those things. And, you know, you might even ask your laboratory, hey. Can I have a copy Of your most recent internal audit, report? It's a good idea. You know? And and and that'll help you to figure out what's going on. Now I'm I will tell you that You're gonna have to have a pretty doggone good relationship with a laboratory for them to offer that information up to you because many times that's Mhmm. You know, protected information and it, You know, we don't wanna share where we're falling short. You know, if if I'm using a lab and I think they're really good and they do provide me with a copy of their internal audit And they have 75 deficiencies, then that, you know, that shakes my world up and says, okay. Maybe, you know, maybe this isn't, you know, what I need to do. But what I really wanna see is, You know, it it it offers me comfort that they're actually looking for things that are going wrong, right, and that are actively and proactively looking for these things. Then I wanna see how are you gonna fix these things? How what did you do to figure out why you're making these mistakes? And so as I mentioned, We do the internal audits. We have checklists that we use. You know, one of the things we do in in in our practice is we go into laboratories at their request And conduct these audits for them because you can imagine if you've worked in a laboratory for 10 years or 15 years and you're doing these audits every year, It's easy for you. You've looked at this stuff so often and so many times, it may be easy for you to miss something that you're doing wrong because you've been looking at the same stuff for so long. And so sometimes we'd like to bring in an objective, you know, third party who's never looked at that lab before and then go through the checklist that he and I have developed for all the different methods and all the different things, that laboratories do to try to find those deficiencies. We find those deficiencies. We find things that are wrong, and then we do a root cause analysis to determine why why is that mistake being made, and then we devise a corrective action To address that that deficiency, and then we work on that for a while, and then maybe after a month or something, we might go back and see if we're Falling back into our old bad habits or not. If we are, then the corrective action that we devised hasn't really been effective because we're still making the same mistake. So then we revisit the root cause analysis and figure out, okay. We need to go a little bit deeper. We need to do something a little bit different because our folks are still, you know, making the same error. And so we'll revisit that, and we'll redevise or devising new corrective action to try to figure that out, and we'll follow-up later to make sure that's good. And so It's this constant improvement that we're seeking and what we're trying to do, and we want to encourage staff, you know, in the environmental laboratory. I want you To look for things that we're not doing right. Look for where we're falling short. Right? You wanna work with a laboratory who has an atmosphere where all that stuff's encouraged. Right. We want people to find things that are wrong so that we can always get better. One of the requirements of the TNI standard, one of the most fundamental requirements is that the laboratory always improves. And what I tell the folks I work with is, look, your natural tendency is I don't want any deficiencies. Right? I don't want anything wrong. I want you to give me and say I'm doing everything exactly the way I'm doing it. But the problem with that line of thinking is that if I my lab is perfect, then I have a deficiency because I can't approve. Right. And so we we want to know that there's always going to be something that we can do a little bit better and that no laboratory is perfect. And we want to, you know, encourage, an atmosphere where folks are always looking, how can we get better and what can we do? And those are the kind of labs that that you wanna work with. And labs that think that way and operate that way and have that culture are the labs that are typically not afraid to share with you and communicate with you openly on any of the things that they do and let you, you know, come in. You could even go into a lab yourself and walk around and say, show me what you're doing. Show me how this. I'd really love to know how do you analyze volatiles. I don't know. Why don't you show me? Go into those labs and see if they'll show you around. I I think that's a great idea, and I'll I'll just ask you. I mean, you were you ran a laboratory. You owned a laboratory. Did you Implement and learn this stuff from the laboratory. I I I I kinda know the answer, but I wanna ask you, you know, did you did you identify anything k. You were successful that you identified during that process. You said these are things we actually can improve, and I can implement that in my course of my current business to help out other laboratories. I mean, when we started our laboratory in in 2002, we started from scratch. And I honestly did not have a lot of background in a commercial environmental laboratory. Prior to that time, I had been, you know, a practicing environmental engineer. I've been a research chemist for a little while, a lot of stuff, but I didn't really know how environmental laboratories analyze samples. I use their data all the time at back in 2002, but I never actually generated that data myself and went through that process. Mhmm. And in Florida, in 2002 is when the state decided that, hey. If you're doing analysis of soil or groundwater, hazardous waste, any of that stuff, you need to be accredited by October of 2003. Prior to that point in time, only water treatment labs and wastewater treatment labs are worth were required to be accredited. And so Those first quality manual. The quality manual is sort of the over, the overarching document that we have that kinda dictates how we do everything that we do in the lab, And then we have standard operating procedures for each of the methods that we run. But I can tell you that first quality manual that we generated in 2002 And those standard operating procedures that we generated in 2002, when I looked at what they all look like in 2014 when we sold our lab, They were exponentially better. But the idea was that even as bad as they looked in hindsight, We were still accredited because we were doing what we needed to do, and we were constantly looking for ways to improve. And so, you know, that's That that's just the nature of things. And, again, at the at at the end of the day, we're trying to create an environment where we're always looking for opportunities to get better and to improve what we're doing. And and and it it's just it has to be that way. And and I say that with somewhat leading question, because, again, I went to Mark's lab, and, I mean, I could go in anywhere. He's like, come on in. Show me around. I went in the inner little clear areas. I mean, no problem. And that was a welcoming event Because other laboratories, you know, are are not that welcoming. So I think that's a a great benefit of anyone. Again, working with a smaller laboratory that says, You know what? Come in. Take a look at our stuff. Understand what we're doing. Sit down. We'll talk about the reports. You know, having that relationship is is amazing, and I I really appreciated Having that 1 on 1 time because it allowed me to understand what what a a higher standard is that could be set for laboratories. Sure. So moving forward, as we are right now with the state of laboratories, with acquisitions, with So lower costs and higher volumes, where do you see us heading as far as the future of of whether it's, in, changes in technology, or the increase, you know, again, I talk about this. There are contamination issues, but there are also a lot of things that are driven by lawsuits. So where do you see the, the future of analysis from the environmental side and the use of that information, the reliability of that as we move forward into the future, different constituents, different methodologies, different technologies? Yeah. I think, you know, I think, technological advances are gonna drive detection limits Lower. I think that's natural. You can look back over the last 50 years and see how much we've improved, you know, what we're able to see in in the environment. And I think it's important to recognize that, you know, if laboratory a has lower detection limits and laboratory b, it doesn't mean they're a better laboratory. Right? There's, all kinds of procedures that we use and employ to develop our detection limits. And and and and, you know, fortunately for us, we are improving those technologies and and and how we approach the idea of a detection limit. And the detection limit is, you know, what's the lowest amount of something that we can see With a certain degree of certainty. But I think technology is gonna drive detection limits lower and allow us to to approach Some of these toxicology based, health based criteria are things like PFOS and that sort of stuff. PFOS is, you know, is the new, you know, Is the new contaminant du jour, or group of contaminants du jour? The health based limits are extremely low And in many cases, well below anything that we can reasonably see with the technology we have. But I think those limits are gonna get closer and closer, and over time, we'll get better and better At analyzing, lower and lower concentration of these types of things. I think, so so so I think One of the things that we can look forward to is, technological improvements that allow us to see lower and lower and lower detection limits, for these, contaminants and analyze that we're interested in. I think another thing, you know, automation and robotics play a huge role in laboratories these days. I mean, back in the, You know, in the in in the early nineties, you know, we're manually injecting each sample that we're gonna analyze, and so it required, You know, a living, breathing human being to be sitting at the instrument and inject that into the instrument, wait for the runtime. It might be 10 minutes. It might be 30 minutes. It might be an hour, And then come back an hour later and inject another one by hand and do this. And so we were limited to the number of samples that we could analyze in a, you know, in any given period of time. Now we have auto samplers that we can program to run a 100 samples, and, you know, you can program it on Friday afternoon before you go home for the weekend and you come in on Monday morning, and all those samples have run over the weekend unattended, and you just have to go through and look at the results and, you know, crunch the data and make sure that everything makes sense. But I think that, you know, analyzing a 100 samples, at a time is something that's reasonable now. It may be that, you know, in the future, we could analyze samples for the course of a week And and all that's unattended, and then we can go back and look at that sort of thing. So I think, you know, I think automation and robotics are gonna improve our ability to Be more efficient, right, if we get you know, people get bored. People get distracted. You know, robots and automation, they don't. And so sometimes we can rely on those things to do things without making these errors. But at the end of the day, it's still people that are programming those, You know, those auto samplers and those robots and and all that automated stuff, it has to be programmed properly because it's only gonna do what we tell it to do. And if we tell it to do something wrong, it's gonna keep doing the same thing wrong until we tell it, you know, don't do that anymore. And so I think that's one of the things that we have to be able to, we have to be able to look forward to, is the technological advances driving those detection limits lower and the increasing role of automation and robotics all the stuff that goes on in the lab. No. I think that's great information. I think the information, that we've discussed today and that you have presented, I think it's gonna be very Well, because, again, as as people that's either early career individuals, in many different environmental engineering hygiene or or anywhere that's gonna rely on laboratory information. I I think that's important to us. So I think it's important for people to understand. Even people in the general public are like, what are these numbers mean, or why are we going through all these steps to ensure, to collect these samples? Because sometimes, as you said, sometimes these samples are expensive, and there's a reason why there's a potential higher cost, for these samples. And, again, as as we are a society that can be, driven by, legal actions, there's gonna be people that collecting these and or even attorneys saying, what What do these samples mean, and why should I rely on 1 over the other? So I think a lot of the information that you presented today has been Great. Based on, you know, understanding what the environmental laboratories are in general, laboratories and how to communicate with them, the positives and negatives of working with those, and where we are going in the future? So, Mark, Allison, Jorny, thank you very much for joining us today. We really appreciate your information. Thanks, Alex. It's been a it's been a real pleasure talking with you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the exposure scientist podcast. You can connect with us our website, exposure consulting.com, where you can book a private consultation and send in any questions Regarding any episodes or our guests. See you on the next episode.