Work Begins on $7.2 Million, 11-Floor Addition to Medical School Laboratory

Workmen have finished putting up the steelwork for an 11-floor addition to the Medical School's Kresge Center for Environmental Health..

This addition is the third stage in the construction of a $15 million Health Science Laboratory Complex which was begun more than five years ago and will not be completed until sometime in 1969. The first two parts of the complex are the four-floor Kresge Center opened in 1962 and the adjoining four floor Nutrition Research Laboratory.

The 11-floor addition, which is being put up at a cost of $7.2 million, will house the Center of Infectious Diseases, the Population Studies Center, a computing Center and several other departments associated with the School of Public Health.

Two floors in the new building will be used for special equipment to make the building, in the words of a Med School official, "one of the most completely equipped laboratory complexes from the standpoint of the treatment of air contaminants."

The infectious disease center where researchers will study such diseases as malaria and typhus will be equipped with its own air exhaust system and an electronic incinerator to insure that no contaminants escape into the outside air. The rest of the building will make use of three separate air exhaust systems, not counting the systems used by the infectious disease center. Before the air from these other three system used by air from these other three systems is exhausted it will pass over an ultraviolet light source for sterilization.

Because of a shortage of funds the entire complex could not be completed at the same time, and consequently it was built in three stages. The Nutrition Research Laboratory was originally built with only three floors, but a fourth was added several years ago to provide facilities for primate research.

The money required for the construction of the addition has come from a variety of private foundations, individuals, and industries. In addition, the National Institute of Health provided the School of Public Health with $2.7 million to aid in the construction.