As the health effects of environmental contamination are better understood, regulations become more stringent for persistent environmental organic contaminants such as dioxins, phenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), and dimethylamine (DMA) in water and in processed or unprocessed foods including fish, oils and vegetables. Environmental agencies and the food processing industry are hard-pressed to detect and measure contaminations in water and food samples. Screening for diverse contaminants and over a large number of samples is cumbersome and error prone. Automation is necessary to efficiently aliquote samples and carry out high throughput repetitive liquid handling protocols.    
    
Aurora’s automated Environmental Sample Processing Workstation is capable of aspirating environmental samples from tall tubes and dispensing them to specially designed recipient racks or carousels, including targets such as Konelab cuvettes. This workstation carries out user-defined dilutions, repetitive and complex environmental liquid handling processes. The long sampling needle of the workstation has a special sonication wash station for high purity cleansing that minimizes cross contamination. Automated performance using this high precision instrument has been determined to be significantly more accurate, sensitive and precise than traditional manual performance.    
    
Samples provided in raw or pre-processed form within tall tubes are automatically converted for further downstream testing. Combining the automated Sample Processing Workstation with a chemical analyzer such as the Konelab analyzer provides the user with a complete analysis package - from raw samples through to results.