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Boston Globe

Inside construction of the new R.I. State Health Laboratory, slated to open this fall

Instead, on Tuesday morning, crews outfitted in yellow vests and hard hats were still walking the 80,000 square feet that will eventually house the Alongside them were Governor Dan McKee, state laboratory officials, and a gaggle of reporters, who were invited to take in a sneak peek of the long-awaited facility inside the Advertisement When construction finishes on the state lab portion of the project later this summer, the new space will be20 to 30 percent larger than the agency's current home at 50 Orms St., which state lab officials said is too small and outdated. Get Rhode Island News Alerts Sign up to get breaking news and interesting stories from Rhode Island in your inbox each weekday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I always joke we were one microwave away from a blackout,' Dr. Louis Marchetti, chief of clinical toxicology and laboratory support functions, said as he stood inside an area that will someday be used to analyze what's known as forever chemicals – 'But in this building we have the opportunity to not only expand and collaborate, but bring in more cutting edge infrastructure in order to further increase our capacity within the state to do these types of monitoring and surveillance programs.' Advertisement Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee peers out a third floor window as he and the media toured the new Rhode Island State Laboratories in Providence. Construction is still in progress at the facility. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff The state laboratories will inhabit three floors of the complex being built by science-focused developer Ancora L&G. According to Dr. Glen R. Gallagher, director of the state health laboratories, the approximately $98 million budget for the state's portion of the building remains on target. The sum includes funding from an $82 million US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant. And even as the The state laboratories are responsible for a wide variety of research and testing, from forensics and environmental sciences to the state's infectious disease response. On Tuesday's tour, reporters were given a glimpse inside select areas that will eventually house some of those operations. For instance, a special, secure area on the first floor of the building will be dedicated to receiving forensic evidence from all law enforcement throughout the state, including crime scene DNA, drunken driving blood kits, and overdose death testing by the medical examiner, according to Cara Lupino, chief of forensic sciences. (While the State Health Laboratory works closely with the A room down the hall will house work done on the labs' highest volume tests: chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, and syphilis, said Dr. Richard Huard, chief of biological sciences. Advertisement Another area will handle wastewater testing – a practice the state started during the COVID pandemic that Huard described as a 'a powerful and important new tool for public health in order to identify pathogens in the community and to track the trends.' Hanging wires frame the water quality monitoring lab as the media was invited to tour the new Rhode Island State Laboratories in Providence. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff 'We're doing it now in our old lab, but we're very squished into a section of another laboratory,' Huard said. 'This section here will provide the build out of a dedicated wastewater … laboratory.' The state's current testing regimen focuses on levels of COVID, flu, and RSV, but Huard said staff could 'test for just about anything.' 'Now that we have these partnerships with wastewater treatment facilities, if there was a new pathogen that came out of nowhere, we could quickly bring on that testing and start to look for it even before we had any cases,' Gallagher said. Elsewhere, there will be labs monitoring water for the state's beaches and shellfishing industry, and testing for dangerous pathogens, such as tuberculosis and agents used in bioterrorism events, in what's known as a 'Biosafety Level 3' space – the only one of it's kind in the state, Huard said. 'We test the suspicious powders that may be in the mail or anything that may be discovered in some super villain's hidden laboratory,' said Huard. The media was invited to tour the new Rhode Island State Laboratories in Providence on Tuesday. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Gallagher noted that the work being done in that particular laboratory is aimed at identifying things that are already in the environment or in communities, whether those are hazardous chemicals or for more nefarious purposes. 'We're not doing research to understand them more, other than if they are there or not, so that we can respond to them and keep them from spreading,' he said. Advertisement When finished, the laboratories will join a growing lab cluster in the city's Jewelry District when it opens this year. Down the street, construction is underway for Brown signed on as an anchor at PVD Labs, which includes 120,000 square feet to be leased out to life sciences tenants, beyond the state lab's footprint. 'Several companies based in Rhode Island, and beyond, have expressed interest in occupying space within the incubator,' Dr. Mark Turco, president and CEO of the R.I. Life Science Hub, told the Globe in a statement on Tuesday. 'It would be premature at this point for a company to formally sign on, but the marketplace response has been favorable and strong as we get closer to opening of Ocean State Labs.' The new Rhode Island State Laboratories will be housed inside this building on Richmond St. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Christopher Gavin can be reached at