Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 26/01) - Detecting the unseen with close-to-perfect accuracy is a tall order.

To meet it, chemical analysts and technicians at the Taiga Environmental Laboratory rely on tools that would not be out of place on the USS Enterprise.

The inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, for example. Used to measure concentrations of metals in water, the $250,000 device is the latest addition to the Taiga lab.

Established in the late 1960s, the Indian Affairs and Northern Development facility is the only lab of its kind north of 60th parallel.

The Taiga lab is used to test drinking water for most communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It also analyses water and effluent samples for mining and other industries.

Acting lab manager Kathy Racher is careful to note that determining whether a mine or municipality is in compliance with their water licence is not part of the work of the lab.

"Confidentiality is part of being an analytical lab," says Rachar. "You can only give the results to the client."

For the NWT, the next nearest lab is in Edmonton. That can be a big problem for one of the most common tests the lab has to conduct. Water samples to be tested for bacteria content must be tested within 24 hours of being taken.

With the vagaries of Northern weather, getting such a sample from places as far away as Resolute Bay to Yellowknife is difficult enough.

Technicians are capable of detecting substances down to the atomic level, depending on what they're looking for.

The technology for some tests is a little less complex.

To determine the amount of suspended solids in a sample, for example, precisely 100 millilitres of water is passed through silt-catching filter.

Each filter is weighed before it is used, because it is weight that is used to determine the total suspended solids in the sample.

Once the used filter is dried, it is weighed down to a 10,000th of a gram. The weight of the filter is subtracted to determine how much silt and other solids were in the water.

It has only been over the last few years that the lab began selling its services to other levels of government and private industry.

During the 2000/01 financial year, 20 per cent of testing was done for private industry. The territorial government and municipal governments accounted for another 24 per cent.

The revenue that business has generated has allowed the lab to expand its testing capabilities to include such devices as the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, Rachar says.