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Text Box: Congress has created an initiative for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to aggressively monitor fresh and frozen fish and food stuff entering the US. Because of the shortage of wild fish, fish farms are proliferating in many countries. Conditions at these facilities are often unsanitary, the fish are fed antibiotics and are often processed in sub-sanitary conditions. Because of such conditions, the FDA monitors all imported food stuffs, domestic grains and nuts, medical apparatus, and new medications released under the FDA’s jurisdiction for new medical treatments. The government’s initiative also calls for new regional labs designed to provide the advanced microbiology analytical data needed to evaluate the safety and wholesomeness of imported foods. The FDA lab designed and built in Jamaica, NY, is as much a processing lab as it is a testing and research lab. Large volumes of food stuff are handled and disposed of every day. All testing and analytical evaluations must be performed under the tightest security and cleanest possible environment. Given the stringent requirements for a sterile environment, Kallen & Lemelson developed a sustainable design for the fume hood exhaust system and the central refrigeration plant. The mechanical systems designed used redundant high-efficiency filtration in conjunction with HEPA filters to assure highly clean air within the sample test areas. Very high purity water is needed for many of the USP tests that must be performed. In addition, extensive use is made of gas chromatographs, atomic absorbers, MRIs and other highly sophisticated electronic analytical tools. There are approximately 140 chemistry-type fume hoods that exhaust all air to the outside. As part of an integrated temperature control and lab hood control system, the hood controller reduces the exhaust CFM (and the supply CFM) when the fume hood is unoccupied or in unmodified use for periods of 15 minutes or greater. This reduces the energy to half of what is needed to heat or cool the exhaust makeup air. Further, the hood exhaust is a variable air volume VAV type, which further reduces the actual air heated and exhausted by the natural diversity of researchers using their lab equipment. In addition to the reductions available from the “air” side, the chilled water system uses primary/secondary pumping arrangements so as to minimize electric usage on light air-conditioning days. The chillers themselves are modern CFC-free machines, using the latest blends of new commercial refrigerants. Advanced automatic temperature controls can anticipate optimum times to warm up or cool down labs, thereby reducing unnecessary energy consumption. The refrigeration plant has a special heat exchanger that generates cool chilled water via the cooling towers when the outside weather is moderately cool and dry. A passive safety design of adequate dilution air within each lab was also included. While the FDA’s protocol requires all reactions to be performed within a fume hood, there are many instances where glass bottles of different solvents or acids are broken outside of the hood. K&L‘s design included sufficient amounts of fresh air supplied into the lab to keep the buildup of concentrations to a reasonably low level to facilitate rapid egress. Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . US Food & Drug Administration Architect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hellmuth Obata Kassabaum