> Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals that are dangerous at 1ppb only gas-chemotography / mass-spectr

> Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals that are dangerous at 1ppb only gas-chemotography / mass-spectrometry can detect that, which would cost upward of $500 per test per chemical i don't think anyone uses GC/MS to find heavy metals. that would tend to be more of an ICP/MS sort of thing. $500/compound seems pretty steep for GC/MS work, when it can generally see multiple compounds in the same run (that's the whole point of doing the chromatographic separation). > be done at a university lab. plenty of non-universities run GC/MSes, and other fancier instrumentation. you probably need to look into this a little more, i think you probably stumbled across some places that didn't do the sort of work you want on a regular basis, so they were quoting you rather expensive prices to make you go away.