The Sample Receipt Facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground will provide a safe facility for the U.S. Army to analyze hazardous materials and explosives when it is completed in 2008.

The facility will be operated as a partnership of the U.S. Army, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, the Chemical Security Analysis Center, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Those partners will analyze potentially lethal chemical, biological and or radioactive devices in total containment suites built to minimize human exposure. Explosive devices will be detonated in blast cells, which can withstand blasts equal to five pounds of TNT.  The building will be the second on the Edgewood research campus.