Overview
Litter and garbage dumped in wetland area among water lilies and marsh plants.
Ryan Hagerty/USFWS
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (Service) Analytical Control Facility (ACF) is dedicated to providing high quality environmental chemistry support to the Service and other Department of bureaus within the Department of Interior (DOI). The chemical data that has been generated through ACF since its inception in 1985, now number more than 3 million reported concentrations, in over 112,000 samples.
The ACF provides analytical services in support of environmental contaminant activities of the Service, which has the primary responsibility of protecting and managing fish and wildlife populations and their habitats. Environmental pollutants, including agriculture chemicals, industrial compounds, and municipal waste, contribute to adverse impacts on fish and wildlife populations and degrade critical habitat. The environmental contaminant efforts of the Service plays a major role in identifying contaminant problems, assessing their overall biological effects, and in many cases, providing critical evidence to stop contaminations on the environment. Critical to this function is the analysis of environmental samples for pollutants. Thousands of samples are submitted to the ACF each year and are analyzed in one of its contract laboratories. The ACF is also responsible for management of procurement and budgetary activities related to the contracting of analytical chemistry services, providing for new analytical capabilities as demands increase, and ultimately in managing all contaminant data collected nationwide through a web-based computer application and database called the Environmental Contaminants Data Management System (ECDMS).
ACF Services
The ACF provides the following services:
- Consultation
- Quality assurance and quality control on the vast majority of chemical analyses performed for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
- Management services for contract analytical laboratories.
- Manage rapid turnaround analyses for emergency samples.
- Management of the Environmental Contaminants Data Management System, an on-line computerized database of sample collection data and analytical results that is an integral part of the Service's Contaminants Information Management and Analysis System.
- ACF is here to meet our client's analytical needs. Special services can be arranged.
The ACF's lab results support the Service's Ecological Services Program in its ability to:
- Provide biological, toxicological, as well as analytical chemistry data that can be directly used by the Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners to effect positive resource management outcomes.
- Associate chemical exposure and biological and toxicological phenomena in investigations, determine risk to resources in its prevention activities and cleanup recommendations and link cause with effect in critical natural resource damage.
- Evaluate and develop mathematical models of fish and wildlife and their exposures to chemical pollutants of toxicological significance, provide data in the support of models developed by our partners, evaluate chemical data of others for consistency in area of mutual interest.
Why Use the ACF's Services?
The ACF is the sole source of analytical chemical analysis for samples collected by environmental contaminant specialists of the Service and DOI. The ACF has contracted with a limited number of other analytical chemistry facilities that have demonstrated their ability to meet the stringent standards established by the ACF for analysis of various types of samples (i.e., water, soil/sediment, plant, and tissues). The ACF routinely monitors the analytical proficiency of the contract laboratories with cross check samples and round robin analysis of unknown (blind) samples. All analytical reports are reviewed by the ACF Quality Assurance Team for conformity to the ACF QA Criteria. Few laboratories meet the stringent guidelines for the ACF, and consequently, do not provide the high levels of data quality produced by the ACF or its contract laboratories. Much of the data generated from samples must with stand legal challenge. Because of the sensitivity of the data from these samples and the possibility of legal challenge, it is essential that the analytical chemical analyses be conduced at a facility with higher than normal QA/QC procedures. The ACF is such a facility.