Expanding environmental lab captures new market

Shiny new lab aims to capture the market for air, soil and water samples – and quicken turnaround time to boot

SGS has a gleaming new environmental laboratory in Johannesburg, kitted out with high-end equipment which specifically analyzes trace-concentration samples. The lab adds a new business dimension to ECOSERV’s service offering and will keep turnaround to a absolute minimum while giving the environmental group greater control of the quality of its results.

The lab will be used to check air, soil and water samples for contamination at very low levels, for example to establish whether drinking water is safe or to determine whether a site that has been subject to hazardous material spill poses a threat to humans.

“Absolutely, I’m excited about this lab,” said Mark Cawdron, who has been contracted from Chemsult to assist. “It’s opening up capabilities that aren’t typically available in this country. The equipment can detect very low levels of contaminants – we can get down to parts per trillion. With this high-end testing, we can capture a corner of the market that has traditionally been served by labs in Europe and USA.”

Australian Matthew Hill will be joining the ECOSERV team in July 2009 to head up the expanding environmental lab. Matthew, who has been working for SGS on general environmental services projects and Carbon Market Projects in the Middle East and Africa, brings 15 years’ experience to the lab.

Matthew will be moving to Johannesburg from SGS in Dubai, where the business expanded from being a soil and water testing laboratory to providing environmental investigations and climate change services.

ECOSERV’s new environmental services lab has a full house of top notch environmental testing equipment to complement the existing SGS/ECOSERV environmental monitoring service. “The has state-of-the-art equipment designed to test for the full range of organic and inorganic species,” explains Mark.

A GC-MS (gas chromatograph mass spectrometer) is available for organic compounds, BTEX and SVOCs at low detection limits and an ICP-MS performs a full range of elemental analysis on ground and potable water samples to low detection levels of heavy material contaminants, in accordance with stringent World Bank Standards.

An ICP-OES and Ion Chromatography (IC) cover the inorganic and organic sections of the analysis. ICP-OES performs a full range of elemental analysis of effluents, leachates, soils and environmental filters.

“ICP-OES uses similar technology to ICP-MS but has different detection levels- MS gets down to much lower levels of parts per trillion, while OES looks at the parts per million level,” says Mark.

GC-FID performs DRO, GRO and non specialized organic testing while Microbiological testing performs total count, total coliforms, e-coli and feacal coliforms. The micro lab has the ability to set up for client-specific testing.

“We also have a GC-head space analysis that is specific for soils,” says Mark. “While these are all instrumental techniques, the lab has various capabilities for wet chemistry techniques, too.”

Wet chemistry performs macro analytical testing such as pH, EC, COD and other colourimetric and titrimetric analysis. Finishing off the equipment complement is the XRD and SEM which identifies compounds on environmental filters using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, and particle size distribution (PSD) using a Malvern particle counter.

In addition to chemical testing, the lab now offers accredited microbiological testing.
ECOSERV MD Quentin Hurt believes it is critical for ECOSERV SGS to have this laboratory as part of its’ environmental offering. “The proposal to build the lab was first put to SGS in December 2007,” he recalls. “Since then, SGS has invested millions in installing and buying equipment and training staff to make it happen.”

Quentin says the lab is really an extension of the deal with SGS. “Part of the attraction for us in getting involved with SGS was that we recognized their strength in terms of laboratory services internationally. We have always seen it as ideal for us in the long term to have a lab where we can control both delivery time and quality as part of our overall environmental service offering. We see this as very positive and hope in time to offer international quality testing locally. A lot of the work that in past was exported, will now have a local equivalent in SA.”

Apart from the quicker turnaround time, clients also save on courier fees and forex related costs. The lab is already up and running and analysis is conducted using internal/external standards as well Certified Reference Materials. Wherever possible, the laboratory participates in inter-laboratory comparison studies.

“We have embarked on an aggressive accreditation schedule to achieve SANAS accreditation on the full range of tests offered,” concludes Quentin.