Cleaning Up : Environment: Thanks to public awareness and new laws, business is booming for companies that test water, soil and air for toxic substances.

Long before it became trendy to celebrate “Earth Day” and to rally for environmental causes, Peter Shen says, he recognized the public’s growing demand for clean air, water and land.

When he worked as a chemist and lab director for the cities of San Diego and Escondido more than a decade ago, Shen says, he noticed his workload--testing samples for contaminants-- increase as city officials took their first steps to respond to residents’ cries against pollution.

“I could see that there was going to be a lot of work in the environmental field, and that’s when I decided to break off on my own,” said Shen, who in 1979 founded Quality Assurance Laboratory, a Sorrento Mesa-based environmental testing laboratory.

That hunch, Shen says, has paid off handsomely.

Heightened awareness about the environment and passage and enforcement of laws to protect it have led to a boom in business for environmental testing laboratories nationwide, including a handful in San Diego County. Quality Assurance and other San Diego laboratories are keeping busy, scrambling to test air, water and soil samples for public and private sector clients.

These days, environmental laboratories are testing for a variety of pollutants. On a given week, local labs could be checking ground water for trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent; fish tissue for cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and atmospheric samples for chlorofluorocarbons, which are blamed for destroying the atmospheric ozone layer.

For example, Quality Assurance, a closely held company with 39 workers, expects to post $3.2 million in revenues this year, up from $2 million in 1989--the biggest year-to-year gain recorded in the company’s 11-year history, Shen said.

Other laboratories such as Analytical Technologies in San Diego and Pacific Analytical in Carlsbad also report healthy gains.

The environmental testing market has grown steadily in the last decade, but it has surged in recent years as federal, state and local officials passed a slate of legislation and ordinances to fight catastrophic problems such as acid rain, oil spills and greenhouse effect--a global warming resulting from the pollution-triggered erosion of the atmospheric ozone layer that protects the planet from the sun’s rays.

“In the late 1970s, the testing that was being done was predominantly for the” Environmental Protection Agency, said Richard Amano, laboratory manager for

Analytical Technologies. “But the slew of recent legislation has forced private companies to monitor themselves or risk stiff penalties. That has resulted in the birth of environmental testing on the commercial level.”

Founded in 1983, Analytical Technologies Inc. is a subsidiary of ERC Environmental, a Reston, Va.-based environmental consulting firm. In addition to the 18,000-square-foot San Diego laboratory with 80 employees, ATI operates four other facilities, in Pensacola, Fla.; Renton, Wash.; Tempe, Ariz.; and Ft. Collins, Colo. Since 1986, the subsidiary’s revenue has grown at an annual rate of 30%, and last year the laboratory posted revenues in excess of $10 million.

“The general public’s outcry that we have seen lately . . . that’s what’s forcing politicians to pass these laws,” added Shen, president of Quality Assurance. “And that means business for us.”

For example, in 1989, Congress approved federal legislation requiring private industries to monitor storm drain discharges.

“That was to counter the concern of runoff following a rainstorm,” Shen said. “At some industrial plants, you might have some spillage (of chemicals) in the parking lot. When it rains (the spillage) washes down into the storm drains and then ultimately ends up in the ocean. Every time a company monitors its storm drain, that means business for us.”

At the county level, companies that have underground storage tanks--gas stations, for example--are required to monitor such units to detect leaks and to prevent ground-water contamination.

And according to environmental chemists, the movement to pass stiffer legislation doesn’t appear to be ending. Congress is hammering out a revised version of the Clean Air Act that will force private industries to curb toxic air emissions.

Increased use of water reclamation--recycling contaminated water for industrial purposes--will also mean more business for environmental testing laboratories, Shen said.

But Shen and other environmental chemists say the need for expensive, sophisticated laboratory testing equipment and the presence of established competitors will make it more difficult for new laboratories to capture a share of the market.

Getting into the business was a lot easier in 1979, Shen said.

After ending a 14-year civil service career, Shen invested $50,000--money borrowed from relatives and retirement funds--to launch Quality Assurance.

“Back then, you really didn’t need sophisticated equipment,” Shen said. “I used the wet method, for example, to test drinking water.”

During a “wet method” testing, a liquid chemical solution is poured into the sample water. By measuring the change in color caused by the solution, elements in the water can be identified, Shen said.

“For example, if you’re testing for iron, the water will turn red,” Shen said. “You can determine the amount of iron in the water by the intensity of the color.”

But today, legislation with tougher standards requires more accurate measurements and expensive equipment, Shen said.

“Ten years ago, if you were testing for mercury in waste water, the detection level was 0.5 parts per million (detectable by the wet method),” Shen said. “Now you’re looking for 0.005 parts per million. There’s no way you’re going to detect that with the wet method.” Such tests now require an atomic absorption spectrophotometer, a $20,000 instrument.

In addition, Shen said, the volume of work today demands automated equipment that can conducts tests more rapidly.

“Municipalities tested for pesticides in drinking water once every five years back in 1980,” Shen said. “Now, they’re required to do so once every month or two, and, if there’s a problem, once every week.”