Book Description

As the costs of collecting, shipping, and analyzing samples for environmental compliance have increased, ways of reducing those costs have been pursued, including field screening methods. Field personnel have long wanted methods that are portable, easy to use, sensitive for all regulated compounds and elements, and approved for use by all regulators. However, field methods do not currently meet these needs, and thus data quality for these methods must be established. The proper amount of quality assurance on field screening methods cannot be easily standardized or prescribed for all field screening. Many field methods have not been documented sufficiently. To ensure that data of known quality is produced from field methods, the significant aspects of the operation of that method, including performance, must be determined and documented. The DOE's Laboratory Management Branch (EM-532) has initiated a program to assess the numbers and types of field methods both in the literature and available commercially.