Analytical Core

PROJECT SUMMARY: Analytical Core Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are important Superfund chemicals that are human carcinogens also associated with neurological and metabolic disruption. The Analytical Core (AC) supports all five ISRP projects in generating high-quality research products, including data, standard operating procedures, and peer- reviewed publications that are standardized, efficient, and comparable across all ISRP matrices and projects. Centralizing instruments, equipment, standards, protocols, and training under the AC provides significant savings to the ISRP. The AC will continue to accomplish these activities through five Specific Aims: Aim 1. Maintain analytical quality assurance standards and protocols. Accurate, precise, representative, reproducible, and comparable sample analysis is essential for all five ISRP projects and is a key AC objective. The rigor of the Quality Assurance protocol for PCB analysis provides a critical foundation for discoveries by the ISRP projects. Aim 2. Facilitate high-throughput analysis of complex biotic and abiotic matrices. The AC supports ISRP projects during sample analysis for all 209 PCBs and 124 OHPCBs as MeO-PCBs in complex matrices, including: air, sediment, soil, water, porewater, laboratory animal tissues, microbial cultures, and building materials. Aim 3. Provide prioritized training and resources. The AC, in collaboration with the Research Experience and Training Coordination Core, provides prioritized, standardized training in AC facilities and methods to graduate student and postdoc trainees, faculty, and staff from all ISRP projects. Aim 4. Support method development for complex matrices, analytical methods, and data analysis. The AC, in collaboration with ISRP projects, will continue to develop, maintain, and update extraction and instrument analysis methods for high-throughput PCB and OH-PCB extraction and analysis in biotic and abiotic samples. Comparable methods are maintained across matrices to facilitate integrated data analysis. Aim 5. Maintain analytical infrastructure for novel and routine analysis. The AC maintains critical infrastructure, including high-use equipment, separate laboratories for high and low PCB concentration environmental samples and animal tissues sample extraction, and separate cold storage for standards, sample and sample extracts, and clean media. The AC, in collaboration with the Data Management and Analysis Core, provides oversight to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Overall, the AC is a fully-integrated support core that assists ISRP projects to meet all four SRP mandates requiring methods for identifying human health hazards of superfund chemicals, detection, assessment of exposure risk, and remediation.