April 6, 2015
The Hon. Bruce Rauner
Governor of Illinois
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor:
I am writing to urge you to include replacement of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s
Chicago laboratory in your 2015 capital projects bill.
The Illinois Department of Public Health has three laboratories, located in Springfield,
Carbondale, and Chicago. The three laboratories are at the heart of our State’s public health
infrastructure and provide surveillance testing for public health programs. The largest of the
three IDPH laboratories is the Chicago facility, located at 2121 West Taylor, with 85 of the 130
employees dedicated to laboratory testing and quality assurance. Unfortunately, the Chicago
facility infrastructure has deteriorated significantly over the past four decades.
The Chicago laboratory is a critical part of the State’s public health infrastructure for a variety of
reasons. The Chicago laboratory houses the US Department of Homeland Security Bio-Watch
program, which monitors the air in the Chicago area on a daily basis for bioterrorism threat
agents. Chicago is vulnerable to the introduction and rapid transmission of any one of a number
of naturally occurring or intentionally released public health threats. The Chicago laboratory is
part of the first line of defense in any potential bioterror scenario. Thus, it is imperative that
IDPH have a functional and fully operational public health laboratory in Chicago as an integral
part of its preparedness and response resources.
In addition, the Chicago laboratory conducts all newborn screening and tuberculosis (TB) testing
for the entire State. It also houses laboratory services to support public health programs for the
City of Chicago and most of northern Illinois. The Chicago laboratory also performs timesensitive testing for threats like Ebola for the entire the State of Illinois. The Chicago laboratory,
therefore, is the bedrock of our State’s disease surveillance and epidemic management capacity.
The building that houses the laboratory is quite old and funds for maintenance have not been
available. Recently, the Illinois Department of Public Health requested that the Association of
Public Health Laboratories (APHL) send a team of public health laboratory directors to evaluate
the facility and assess its current condition. The team spent several days inspecting the facility,
interviewing laboratory staff and the program staff that depend upon the laboratory’s data. In
2013 and 2014, Capital Development Board (CDB) architects also performed an evaluation of
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April 6, 2015
Page 2
the physical condition of the Chicago laboratory and prepared statements of the necessary work.
Those evaluation projects resulted in the following recommendations for the building:
•
The Biological Safety Level 3 (BSL3) laboratories are in poor condition and frequently
experience loss of negative pressure. These failures provide an unsafe condition for staff
working directly with dangerous organisms and staff working within the building. Repeated
BSL3 failures have shut down those lab areas and left the Chicago region without
Bioterrorism testing abilities for months at a time.
•
The facility is housed in a building at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Medical
Center district. The laboratory shares its space with the University and its students, which
compromises security in a building that houses potentially lethal infectious agents.
Unauthorized individuals are sometimes found within laboratory areas that should be
secured.
•
The laboratory occupies space on five floors, requiring shared elevators to move samples,
infectious waste, staff, and members of the public. CDB architects evaluated these elevators
and determined that they should be replaced.
•
The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) ductwork in the ceiling areas have
been compromised because of cracked seals, corroded ducts, poorly installed ventilation and
exhaust registers, and incomplete seals at the juncture of walls and ceilings in rooms. These
HVAC issues have caused problems for testing and can lead to contamination of results. In
addition, every testing area had inadequate temperature control. Modern laboratory
instruments require a certain temperature range in which to function within their performance
standards. Many tests must be conducted at specific temperature ranges. CDB architects
indicated that the HVAC systems required total renovation. This included the removal and
replacement of the heating boilers, air handling units, distribution pumps, cooling towers, and
temperature control system. The work also includes repairing exit doors, adding a backup
heat exchanger for the domestic hot water supply, upgrading the elevators, and replacing all
light fixtures. The project includes funding for the abatement of asbestos containing
materials.
•
There are periodic problems with odors and occasional sewage back up in the basement of
the building. The building waste water system is below the city’s sewage system, requiring
pumping into the city system. When the pumps aren’t working, the building’s wastewater
has no outlet and there is no means to keep the city sewage out of the building system.
•
Ceiling tiles have water stains on them throughout the building, suggesting that the drain
system has deteriorated and is leaking. In the last year, numerous leaks have occurred within
the building, which postpone testing and destroy equipment and supplies. Water leaks occur
on a monthly basis, thereby jeopardizing the integrity testing. CDB architects indicated that
all ceiling and floor tiles should all be replaced.
•
The strained and decayed plumbing systems deliver poor water quality, insufficient hot
water, and inadequate water pressure. These factors affect safety features like eyewash
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April 6, 2015
Page 3
stations, emergency showers, and basic sanitation. Furthermore, these items impact the
ability to perform quality testing. Safety equipment, such as autoclaves, routinely fails,
contributing to unsafe conditions. CDB architects indicated that all emergency showers and
associated plumbing should be replaced.
•
The building design does not lend itself to the needs of modern laboratory methods.
Molecular testing, such as DNA analysis, requires separate, very clean areas for sample
preparation and processing. These conditions are almost impossible to achieve given the
facility’s limitations and have led to contaminated samples. Walls should be removed
between some laboratory areas to accommodate newer automated testing platforms.
If the Chicago laboratory becomes unusable because of these infrastructure problems, we will
face:
•
•
•
•
•
Complete loss of our ability to test for clinical or environmental bioterrorism agents in the
Chicago metropolitan area;
Complete loss of the statewide newborn metabolic screening program;
Elimination of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Bio-Watch program for Illinois;
Extensive delays in processing specimens for foodborne, waterborne and sexuallytransmitted infections, leading to a significant delay in outbreak response;
Severely diminished capacity to test for emerging infectious diseases like Ebola, Middle East
Respiratory System coronavirus, novel strains of influenza, tuberculosis (including Multiple
Drug Resistant varieties), respiratory viruses and analysis of samples for West Nile virus
from all over the state, along with a complete loss of testing in Chicago metropolitan area.
Rather than repair and renovate the existing facility, we recommend the design and construction
of a new laboratory specifically for these purposes. The facility should be designed in
partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and College of
Medicine, as well as the Illinois State Police. It may be possible to secure funding from private
industry as well.
Replacement of the laboratory will create jobs and provide an economic boost to Chicago’s near
west side.
This is an urgent public health priority to protect the health and safety of all Illinoisans. We urge
you to include replacement of the laboratory in this year’s capital budget.
Sincerely,
David Remmert, Ph.D.
President
cc: M. Madigan, J. Durkin, J. Cullerton, C. Radogno, P. Van Pelt, A. Turner