The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has suspended a second chemist and stopped water testing at the state laboratory amid a state investigation into manipulated data.
State public health officials on Dec. 20 identified that a second chemist had manipulated quality control data, contributing to the lapses in method 200.7, which tests for certain metals in water, the agency said in a Monday news release. The laboratory director then placed the chemist on administrative leave.
As a precautionary measure, CDPHE says it has temporarily suspended water testing in the chemistry program at the state laboratory. The agency says it’s working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine next steps.
There is no evidence of an imminent threat to public health, health officials said.
Public health officials said it would be outsourcing EPA-certified metal and nitrate testing to commercial, accredited laboratories. Testing for non-EPA-related methods will be transferred to a different CDPHE lab. If needed, further testing will go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other state laboratories.
“The integrity of our laboratory operations is our top priority,” said Dr. Ned Calonge, CDPHE’s chief medical officer, in a statement. “We are taking swift and decisive action to address this issue, including fully evaluating the culture and practices of the lab.”
In November, the EPA revoked a testing certification for Colorado’s water quality lab after an investigation found a chemist intentionally disregarded protocol in a method that tests for traces of metals, 9News reported.
Data problems may have impacted as many as 3% of the state’s 2,000 public water systems, state health officials said at the time.
“As of today, it is EPA’s understanding that 69 regulated water systems have been impacted and roughly 20 of those water systems will need to resample to confirm that their water is still meeting federal standards because those specific systems did not have enough additional data to verify that they were still in compliance,” EPA Region 8 spokeswoman Taylor Gillespie told 9News in November.
A September letter from the EPA to CDPHE, reviewed by the TV station, stated that state public health officials found problems in testing data going back five years. The laboratory initially found issues in June 2022 but never notified the lab’s director or the EPA and took no corrective action, the letter stated.