Ultra-trace laboratory for legacy and emerging contaminants

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This application is for the purchase of a system for the preparation of environmental samples (water, snow, animal and plant tissues, microorganisms, soils, aerosols) for a new multidisciplinary platform for the ultra-trace analysis of legacy and emergent contaminants that will be available during Summer 2019, in a new Science building at Université de Montréal. This system will allow precise weighing of small samples, the preparation of solutions of digestion and of standards under ultra-clean atmosphere, and the high temperature, high pressure digestion of samples. Without this preparation system, the high performance analytical facility that the platform will host will not be efficiently usable, with consequences for the training of graduate students.******The team that will use this system is formed of 6 researchers offering a rich and multidisciplinary research program, at the intersection of atmospheric chemistry, aquatic and terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecotoxicology, and coming from 4 departments at Université de Montréal and McGill University. These researchers are active leaders in their fields, with 90 published articles in the last 22 months, including papers in Science, Nature Geoscience et Scientific Reports. Without the requested system, the transfer of 5 of them in the new Science building will result in a lower access to their high-end instruments that will be moved in the new platform.******This group of researchers is very active in training highly qualified personnel, having trained 288 persons in the last 6 years in a collaborative and multidisciplinary environment. With this system, we anticipate that around 20 graduate students will immediately and intensely use the new analytical platform. Any delay will result in the slowdown of research and training activities for this large cohort of highly qualified personnel.**