This link, ACF Overview, will direct you to ACF slide presentation that is further explained below.

The Analytical Control Facility (ACF) is a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) field station, under the Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and is located at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) in Shepherdstown, WV. ACF is dedicated to providing high quality environmental chemistry support to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other Department of Interior Bureaus. The chemical residue data that has been generated through ACF since its inception in 1985, now number more than two million reported concentrations, in over ninety thousand samples.

Overview

ACF provides analytical services in support of environmental contaminant activities of the FWS. The FWS has the primary responsibility for protecting and managing fish and wildlife populations and their habitats. Environmental pollutants, including agriculture chemicals, industrial compounds and municipal waste contribute to direct adverse impacts on populations and degrade critical fish and wildlife habitats. The environmental contaminant efforts of the FWS plays a major role in identifying contaminant problems, assessing their overall biological effects, and in many cases, providing critical evidence to stop contaminations on the environment. Critical to this function is the analysis of environmental samples for pollutants. Thousands of samples are submitted to ACF each year and are analyzed in the ACF chemistry laboratory, or at one of its contract laboratories. ACF is also responsible for management of procurement and budgetary activities related to the contracting of analytical chemistry services, providing for new analytical capabilities as demands increase, and ultimately in managing all contaminant data collected nationwide through a Web-based computer application and database called the Environmental Contaminants Data Management System (ECDMS).

Services We Provide

ACF Provides

• Sample Analyses and Analytical chemistry
• Consultation
• Quality assurance and quality control on the vast majority of chemical analyses performed for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
• Management services for contract analytical laboratories.
• Rapid turnaround analyses for emergency samples.
• Management of the Environmental Contaminants Data Management System, an on-line computerized database of sample collection data and analytical results that is an integral part of the Service's Contaminants Information Management and Analysis System.
• ACF is here to meet our client's analytical needs. Special services can be arranged.

ACF Results Support the Program's Ability to:

• Provide biological, toxicological, as well as analytical chemistry data that can be directly used by the Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners to effect positive resource management outcomes.
• Associate chemical exposure and biological and toxicological phenomena in investigations, determine risk to resources in its prevention activities and cleanup recommendations and link cause with effect in critical natural resource damage.
• Evaluate and develop mathematical models of fish and wildlife and their exposures to chemical pollutants of toxicological significance, provide data in the support of models developed by our partners, evaluate chemical data of others for consistency in area of mutual interest.

Why Use Our Services

ACF is the sole source of analytical chemical analysis for samples collected by environmental contaminant specialists of the FWS and DOI. ACF has contracted with a limited number of other analytical chemistry facilities that have demonstrated their ability to meet the stringent standards established by the ACF for analysis of various types of samples (i.e., water, soil/sediment, plant, and tissues). ACF routinely monitors the analytical proficiency of the contract laboratories with cross check samples and round robin analysis of unknown (i.e., blind) samples. All analytical reports are reviewed by the ACF Quality Assurance Team for conformity to the ACF QA Criteria. Few laboratories meet the stringent guidelines for ACF, and consequently, do not provide the high levels of data quality produced by the ACF or its contract laboratories. Much of the data generated from samples must with stand legal challenge. Because of the sensitivity of the data from these samples and the possibility of legal challenge, it is essential that the analytical chemical analyses be conduced at a facility with higher than normal QA/QC procedures. ACF is such a facility.