Lab Matters Summer 2017 | Page 40

member spotlight

by Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, has been a land of farming, whiskey-making and mining. Owing to massive deposits of coal and iron ore, the county seat of Pittsburgh was once“ one of the most important steel producing areas in the world,” according to Wikipedia, supplying the Union Army in the 1800s and churning out almost 100 million tons of steel to support Allied Forces during WWII.

While US Steel Corporation is still headquartered here, the 735 squaremile county of 2.3 million is now better known for its universities, hospitals, high-ranking sports teams( think Steelers, Penguins and Pirates) and cultural attractions, such as the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Opera, National Aviary and Carnegie Museum of Natural History( which houses one of the world’ s best dinosaur collections).

The county’ s current business sector includes PNC Financial Services, GlaxoSmithKline, RAND Corporation, the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory and a slew of cyber defense, software engineering and robotics firms. In fact, with its robust economy, green building initiatives and leafy neighborhoods overlooking the“ three rivers”— the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio— Metropolis magazine recently named Pittsburgh one of the“ most livable cities in the world.”

Robert Wadowsky, ScD, head of the Allegheny County Public Health Laboratory( PHL), notes another local attraction:“ We find our residents are the most friendly and down-to-earth people you would ever know.”

The PHL, part of the Allegheny County Health Department, works to assure that residents and visitors alike are safe from public health threats. Wadowsky said,“ Although we have this big city, Pittsburgh, surrounding it is a lot of outdoor space.” Both areas generate work for the laboratory, which tests roughly 600 wild animals per year for rabies, with about two dozen positives annually. On behalf of the county’ s housing

Virology and BSL-3 supervisor Steve Gibbs and BSL-3 microbiologist Heather Skiba don PPEs before entering the BSL-3 suite

program, the laboratory tests urban and suburban public-access swimming pools for coliforms and heterotrophic plate counts. And, in Pittsburgh, it tests nursing home water, building cooling tower water and other suspect samples for Legionella species linked to Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks.

Wadowsky has led the laboratory since shortly after relocation to an enlarged, modern facility, overseen the design of a new STD laboratory in a slightly expanded space, and steadily upgraded core assets, such as the laboratory information management system( LIMS) and key testing platforms.

Facility

In 2009, the PHL moved to a new, 10,000-square-foot facility on Allegheny County’ s Clack Campus in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, about 40 blocks from city center.

The campus was once the site of the Allegheny arsenal, a pre-Civil War era munitions manufacturing and supply depot, and the oldest buildings in the area date to the early 1800s. The two-story laboratory structure— whose windowless design boosts security— features a red brick exterior with faux windows, reflecting the architectural style of the campus’ s landmark buildings. The laboratory is equipped with a 700-square-foot BSL-3 suite and a diesel-fueled back-up generator that enables it to function off the electrical grid for weeks at a time, if necessary.

In addition to the main Lawrenceville facility, the PHL operates a STD lab in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh( slated to move to a new, 1,035-squarefoot facility in November 2017) and two drug-testing labs: one in Pittsburgh and one in nearby McKeesport. The laboratory is gearing up to offer pointof-care blood lead testing in the health department’ s Pittsburgh infectious disease clinic and Women, Infant and Children( WIC) program locations.

Director

Wadowsky is a native son, who has spent his entire life in the City of Pittsburgh. After earning a BS in microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh( Pitt), he met his first mentor, Spyros Kominos, ScD, while interning at Pittsburgh’ s Mercy Hospital. That was when Wadowsky,“ fell in love with the field [ of laboratory practice ] and decided I would someday become a laboratory director.” He returned to Pitt to secure MS and ScD degrees in infectious diseases and microbiology from the university’ s Graduate School of Public Health, focusing his doctoral studies on Legionella pneumophila with his second mentor, Robert Yee, PhD.“ We discovered that the bacterium could grow and multiply in tap water,” he said.“ It doesn’ t require anything else.”

Then, said Wadowsky,“ I made a big move— across the street to the Children’ s