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Lab officials again retained BioClean to collect samples, with 100 of them sent to the National Institute of Standards & Technology, which tested them as part of an ongoing study on background narcotics contamination in forensic labs nationwide.

Lab officials approved a $50,000 contract for BioClean, a remediation vendor, to decontaminate the space.

Officials haven’t identified a root cause for the two latest testing irregularities and retained BioClean to conduct further testing at the lab.

Toxicology officials initially hoped to reoccupy the annex after BioClean decontaminated it, but Dr. David Northrop, the state’s crime-lab manager, warned at least some forensics lab personnel in a December 2019 email that “It should be considered absolutely inappropriate” to perform toxicology functions “in the same space that bulk-drug chemistry work is either being done or has been done.”