The Minnesota Health Department (MDH) announced on Tuesday, September 8, that five of the public water supplies in Minnesota will be subject to reanalysis after lab misconduct was discovered through an internal review of the processes.
The alleged misconduct was discovered when MDH started adding QA personnel whose job was to verify and review data found in reports in order to identify certain oversights. Early this year, a reviewer caught on inconsistent time gaps and anomalies in a particular report, which suggested that some information might have been withheld. As the reviewer analysed previous reports, the issue became more significant to warrant action.
Based on their initial investigation, the MDH found out that one of the employees of the Organic Chemistry group of Public Health Lab failed to follow the necessary steps in confirming the calibration of their instruments. The employee also chose to avoid steps intended for quality control, including not sharing failing results from some of the testing runs.
Although the name of the employee remains withheld based on statute limits of the state, MDH mentioned that much of his work involved with untreated surface and groundwater. The job entailed looking for contamination in the water sample such as diesel, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and gasoline. From time to time, the employee also worked as additional support for other water sample analysts. The employee had been in the service for more than a decade.
Aside from a thorough HR investigation, the department is also planning to conduct a data review including the reanalysis of the water supply found in 5 Minnesota areas, namely, Spring Park, Edina, St. Louis Park, Brooklyn Center, and Kasota. From the new data they can obtain, they will compare it to the ones provided by the analyst and hopefully come up with amended reports. They are also looking into reviewing their systems to avoid similar problems in the future.
