Technicians in the Glass Wash/Reagent Preparation section perform support services that aid scientists with the work being conducted at the Center for Urban Waters. In this area, glassware and sample containers are rigorously cleaned to ensure removal of all contaminants. This is critical because residual contamination could be detected in future samples, causing false positives and/or uncertainty in the sample results. Chemical solutions are also prepared in this section for use in the Conventionals Analysis lab.

In this section:

• A glass wash machine uses a combination of special detergents, acid rinses and highly purified water to remove contaminants from lab glassware and sampling containers.
• Checks are made to ensure that equipment measuring weight, temperature, pH, etc., is properly calibrated and making accurate measurements.

For  example:

If glassware is contaminated with even trace levels of mercury, analysts can be prevented from achieving required levels of detection. By segregating and rigorously cleaning glassware specifically designated for this analysis, detection limits can be significantly reduced.