Environmental Exposure

Environmental Exposure Facility

Mission and Overview
The Environmental Exposure Facility is designed to provide state-of-the-art capabilities for conducting exposures of experimental animals and in vitro models to gas phase environmental toxicants. The facility operates under the auspices of the UTMB Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine and is funded, in part, by UTMB institutional commitments. It serves as an institutional service core that provides support to all UTMB investigators and students. In addition, the facility provides a foundation for inter-institution collaborative investigations. The costs to investigators for performing exposures are based on offsetting expenses for facility personnel, equipment maintenance and replacement, animal husbandry, supplies, etc. All exposure protocols must be approved by the UTMB Chemical Safety Committee. If animals are involved, protocols must also receive prior IACUC approval.

Facility Description and Capabilities
The facility is housed in an 800 ft², 3 room suite. In addition to a room for exposure chambers, an animal housing room and a room for conducting in-vitro exposure of cells in culture make up the facility. Four 0.8 M³ stainless steel Hinnars-type exposure chambers are available for exposure of small laboratory Environmental Exposure Facility animals to low concentrations of gas phase chemicals. The facility is equipped for studies using organic chemical vapors, ozone or nitrogen dioxide. The chambers are provided filtered air conditioned building air at a rate of 30 chamber changes per hour. Regulation of gas concentration is accomplished using mass flow controllers. Organic vapor concentrations are monitored by gas chromatography. Concentrations of ozone or nitrogen dioxide are determined by dedicated gas monitors. The facility is maintained under negative pressure relative to the surrounding building spaces to insure that any exchange of air is from the building into the facility. The facility is equipped with safety interlocks that shut down gas and air flow in the event of a power interruption or if a smoke detector is triggered. The in vitro exposure facility uses similar equipment to deliver gases to small glass chambers placed on tilt tables in cell culture incubators.

Facility Status
The facility is currently capable of providing exposures to 1,3-butadiene for small animals. We anticipate having the capability to deliver exposures to ozone and NO₂, as well as cell culture exposures, over the next few months.

The facility continues its ongoing 1, 3-butadiene exposure services; in addition, we have expanded our facility capabilities to include Sulfur Dioxide exposure by the addition of a new Flame Photometric Detector (FPD) to our Gas Chromatograph.

There are now three chambers (Chambers A, B, and 1) that have been organized as exposure chambers with one chamber (Chamber 2) remaining for air controls. A protocol for carbon monoxide is now in the planning stages and the equipment for the generation of Ozone is in place with dedicated gas monitors for both ozone and nitrogen dioxide available. In the next few months we will be setting up an additional protocol for the measurement of Acrolein by Flame Ionization Detection (FID).

A new Scheduling Calendar link has been created at the top of the page so that investigators may plan their experiments when the facilities are available. To schedule a time slot for your experiments e-mail your request to Request Scheduling.

If you have a need for additional protocols, please let us know (scehm.exposure@utmb.edu) so that we can plan them into a future update of the facility.

Contacts

            Division Director: Jonathan B. Ward Jr, Ph.D.
            Phone: 409-772-9109
            Email: jward@utmb.edu

            Facility Manager: Lance Hallberg, Ph.D.
            Phone:   409-772-3797
            Email: lmhallbe@utmb.edu

Histopathology
Environmental Exposure
Synthetic Organic Chemistry
Mass Spectrometry
Molecular Biology/Genomics