BOSTON -- When the Department of Public Health's testing facility was built in the 1890s, scientists were just discovering common bacteria.

NewsCenter 5's Rhonda Mann reported Friday that about 200,000 tests are now performed at the state lab each year for everything from anthrax to whooping cough to HIV.

The Jamaica Plain facility may be the oldest public health laboratory in the country, but it has the latest technology -- including a fingerprint security system. It's a necessity in an age of bioterror threat. Suspicious white powders are still sent to the building two to three times per week, health officials said.

"We are really a lab that has to be ready to test for the emergent agents, like sudden acute respiratory system, avian influenza," Department of Public Health's Dr. Sandra Smole said.

That technology includes CSI-like testing. Instead of growing potential bacteria on a Petri dish, a new computerized genetic testing looks at DNA to see if an organism is present.

"Things that used to take days, now take hours," Department of Public Health's Dr. Alfred DeMaria said.

Within three hours, the state can tell if someone has the bird flu and can take steps to keep it from spreading. They've already run the test on 14 travelers to Asia who developed symptoms. All were negative, but the testing helps keep staff up to speed on the technology.

"By doing that we also practice. We exercise the procedures to get the specimen in, get it done, get it ruled out," DeMaria said.

But health officials said that bird flu and other highly publicized illnesses, such as mad cow disease, do not top their list of public health concerns in Massachusetts.

"It's the common things that are the threats. Ordinary influenza kills 36,000 people a year in the U.S., and we test for that as part of our surveillance system," DeMaria said.

Mosquito-borne diseases are also of concern.

"In a four and a half month period, we tested 8,000 mosquito pools and that would be 16,000 tests," Smole said.

There were 265 cases of tuberculosis last year in the Bay State. Experts said it's making a comeback partly because it's becoming resistant to antibiotics and because it spreads so fast.

By the end of this year, the lab may become even more high tech. They're expecting new equipment that could cut testing time down from three hours to under 60 minutes.