The Mississippi State Public Health Laboratory is the state’s only public health laboratory. The lab is an 80,000 square foot, 4-story concrete structure. The facility is built to Biosafety Level 3 (BSL) construction standards and has containment areas that allow staff to work safely with highly infectious agents or samples of unknown origin. The lab is used for a variety of specialty laboratory testing including infectious diseases such as Salmonella, West Nile Virus and whooping cough. In addition to multiple laboratories throughout the building, the facility also contains testing facilities, waiting rooms, and a series of office suites. The MPHL acts as a first responder for terrorism events by being a Level 2 chemical terrorist response laboratory and the state’s only Laboratory Response Network (LRN) reference laboratory for biological threats.