Facilities

First Environmental Laboratories, Inc. is based in a state-of-the-art facility specifically designed for the chemical analysis of environmental samples. Our laboratory is housed in approximately 8,000 square feet of space, located in Naperville Illinois, approximately 25 miles southwest of Chicago's O'Hare airport.

Equipment

Our laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation capable of providing a full range of analytical services utilizing EPA approved procedures, and allows us to meet the diverse needs of our clients.

The equipment and instrumentation used to produce our product - analytical results - are the single most important tools we use to provide our clients with timely and accurate data, and therefore, represents the single largest area of capital investment.
Critical to our ability to consistently provide our clients with timely and accurate results, is the reliability of our equipment. To ensure reliability and minimize instrument down time, we maintain service contracts and preventative maintenance agreements with our vendors on all of our major instrumentation. Additionally, we have developed and implemented a detailed in-house maintenance program for all of our equipment.

Below is a partial listing of our equipment and instrumentation:

Organic Analyses

(1) Agilent 5975B GC/MS with Dual EnCon and 100-position Centurion  Purge and Trap Autosamplers.


(1) Agilent 5972 GC/MS with Dual EnCon, PT2 and EST 81000 Purge and Trap concentrator/autosamplers.

(1) Agilent  5973 GC/MS with Varian Archon 5100A Purge & Trap concentrator/autosampler:

(2) Agilent  5972 GC/MS with Varian Archon 5100A Purge & Trap concentrator/autosamplers: These systems represent state-of-the-art in environmental volatiles analysis. The improved Varian and Agilent systems are designed for the additional analytes and lower detection
limits being required by USEPA protocols. Additional features added to this system allow for more accurate, automated and rapid determinations. The PC based computer control allows us to integrate data into widely used programs for further data analysis and reduction (e.g. spreadsheet software).

(1) Agilent  5973 GC/MS with HP 7673 Autosampler

(2) Agilent  5972 GC/MS with HP 7673 Autosampler: Recent technological advancements in this most recent bench-top GC/MS has resulted in vastly improved (lower) detection limits as compared to the older models. We have further optimized the equipment and methodology to allow us to provide our clients with more reliable GC/MS methods in place of the less reliable GC and HPLC methods in a cost-effective manner.

(1) Agilent 6890 GC with HP 7673 Autosampler, Dual ECD and Single FID detectors.

Agilent s latest Gas Chromatograph allows easier operation and automatic data reduction for our pesticide, PCB, alcohol and TPH analyses.

(1) TCLP Zero Headspace Extraction Apparatus

Metals Analyses

(1) Thermo Jarrell Ash ICAP 61E Trace Analyzer: This instrument combines the speed and power of simultaneous ICP spectroscopy with the ability to reach part per billion and part per trillion detection levels previously only available through the more costly and time consuming graphite furnace methods.

(1) Perkin Elmer Elan 9000 ICP/MS: This Instrument performs and analyses at the parts-per-billion level and lower.  The Simu/Scan dual-stage detector measures both high and low level analytes simultaneously.

Wet Chemical Analyses

First Environmental Laboratories, Inc. operates a fully equipped wet chemistry laboratory, capable of performing a wide variety of classical analyses. A partial list of the equipment used to perform these analyses are:

(1) Milton-Roy UV-Vis Spectrophotometer

(1) Skalar AquaPro Autoanalyzer

(1) Midi Cyanide Distillation Apparatus

(1) Skalar SanSystem Autoanalyzer