The
building was a small two story brick building, the second floor had been an add
on a few years previously and it housed the entire health department.
The
lab, which had previously been in a single cramped room on the first floor, had
been moved to the second floor and was some what spacious for its time.
All
the labs i had worked in previously were in basements and this lab had windows
that opened!
It
was not a well equipped nor sophisticated lab, but it was functional.
There
were mismatched pieces of furniture and a couple of actual lab benches.
There
were well, a total of four instruments; a pH meter, an ancient
spectrophotometer, another ancient fluorescent spectrophotometer and a
non-working gas chromatograph.
There
were chemicals purchased years earlier, that had not even been opened.
This
was not just a water testing lab, but basically did the work for what ever
grant the current health director was ale to get money for.
The
unused gas chromatograph had been purchased many years earlier to test for
pesticides from an old dump in North Stamford.
Finding nothing, the machine laid covered with dust. The chemicals were from an air sampling
program that was finished. The amount
of clinical testing done by the lab was impressive and was funded by the state
VD (as it was called back then) program.
When things became more regulated, our lab would be ranked "highly
complex" because of the skills needed to interpret bacterial plates and
quantify the level of infection of a syphilis test.
I
was comfortable with those test and i became comfortable with the person who
ran most of those tests, a sophisticated Jewish lady, who had significant
hospital experience, but preferred the slightly less pressured job at this
lab. She was also the best phlebotomist
i have ever met. She was also doing
drug screening in urine for a nearby half way house.
Another
grant for lead poisoning and anemia screening had another lady doing the very
demanding work of going into the community and finding children who where at
risk. The lady, a very bossy and no
nonsense person, was perfect for the job and had a drive to make sure the
children in our town were safe. I liked
her and had great respect for her work.
That
left our boss and me and that made four people who would work in this lab.
The
lab director was brilliant, extremely knowledgably in microbiology, genetics
and immunology and he taught classes at the nearby branch of the University of
Connecticut in those subjects. He left
a state job in the laboratory in Hartford, just to get this lab started. He was well respected by every person i
every met who worked for the state of Connecticut.
He
had little water chemistry experience and that is where i fit in.
I
began in October, just after the busy Summer season and in someway it was very
good that things slowed down, there was so much to learn!
The
water testing performed by the lab were primarily on water brought in by
another section of the health department, the environmental health section,
whose personnel where all certified by the state of Connecticut as Registered
Sanitarians or RS for short.
These
were mostly new wells and the tests that we performed in the lab were very
simple, dipstick and colorimetric tests.
The chemicals used were mostly pre-packaged in the amount needed for a
single test and many tests used a hand held color wheel to determine how much
of something was in the sample.
There
was a hierarchy of what tests were performed meaning that if something was
elevated something else would be tested for, but only if the first test came
back elevated.
A
good example of this were the staining metals, iron and manganese would only be
tested for if color or turbidity were elevated.
According
to the lab director, we were suppose to be using methods described in a
"bible" of water testing called "Standard Methods", but the
practice when i first came was much simpler than this.
An
example was sodium, it was only tested if the amount of chloride in the water
sample was over a certain limit and sodium was not tested, rather it was
calculated using a simple formula.
There was another formula to use if the sample had a treatment unit, but
neither were essentially accurate.
I
was invited to change all of this.
On
occasions, a home owner with a well would show up and ask to have their water
checked. Most of the time it was only
for "potability", which meant a bacteriological test for a group of
organisms called total coliforms. If
you had any, the water was considered not potable, or not drinkable and the
home owner was told they should contact a well person to fix the problem.
This
test i had performed in other jobs and was not unfamiliar to me, but then came
other microbiological tests.
For
the summer, the lab tested the quality of the water at the beaches and this was
beginning to take me out of my comfort zone.
Then
the environmental health people would bring sample that were suspected septic
failures.
Then
i was asked to test waters for the shellfish beds using an abstract
microbiological technique called MPN (most probable number) using a multiple
tube method.
I
was really out of my comfort zone.
My
extra courses in college in biochemistry, did not prepare me for the field of
microbiology.
The
little bit of work that i had done previously, did not prepare me for all that
i needed.
I
spent the first year and a half learning about media and general testing, i
barely understood what the numbers meant.
By the busy summer time i was at least prepared, as a technician, to do
the work required to monitor the public beaches and shellfish areas, but i was
still unsure of what the results actually meant and even took some of my
results to the health director when "fecal coliforms" out numbered
"total coliforms" in one set of results. He told me that they were different organisms, something i know
now to be erroneous, but what did i know at this time?
I
still had so much to learn, but learn i did and in my second year, i became
more confident and had added three tests that had not previously been performed
and changed several methods to more correct ones.
A
few more home owners brought samples to the lab, this was unusual because our
existence was not known to the general public.
Problem
plagued the lab, money problems. Grants
bought people, and instruments, but there was no grant for water testing, this
was the lab manager's vision for the future of the lab and so, without a grant,
there was no money.
Without
a grant, buying a new instrument was virtually impossible. There were ways, but first step was to
convince the laboratory director that it was worth the effort to push something
through the budgetary process.
I
had not learned this skill and did not make much headway on things i thought
should be changed.
I
was losing ambition and becoming frustrated.
Because
of this and other factors, in my third year, during the slow time in the
Winter, i became bored.
Perhaps
it was a combination of things for i believe i also became complacent.
It
is one of my complaints about civil service jobs, if you do not want to work,
you can get by doing just enough. Now
through out my career, i have heard many people call civil service employees
lazy, i was not because i had another part time job and was volunteering the
rest of my waking time at a local shelter.
I am even unsure that other workers are lazy, but certainly many are
uninspired.
At
the end of my second year I was giving up and losing my fire to find out
"what if" and the lack of funding to get the equipment i thought we
needed was also grating on my nerves.
It
was because of all these factors that i allowed myself to be only the lab technician
and was doing things by rote.
During
my boss's vacation, I played.
