Quality control guidance for sampling and analysis of air toxics
- Core Laboratories, Houston, TX (United States)
All environmental measurements require quality control to support the usability of analytical results, which is why effective and comprehensive quality control procedures are critical in performing accurate air toxics measurements. Lack of quality control can add significant error to environmental measurements. The US EPA has estimated that 95 percent of the total error in environmental measurements is due to sample collection and handling (85 percent from sample collection and 10 percent from subsampling in the laboratory) and that 5 percent is due to the laboratory analysis. Effective quality control measures help reduce analytical errors and produce meaningful analytical results. This paper provides quality control guidance for performing accurate air toxics measurements of ambient air and source emissions samples for volatile organic chemicals, including equipment handling, field sampling and laboratory analysis. The recommended frequency for quality control procedures as well as acceptance criteria are discussed. Quality control guidance for equipment handling includes checks on flow controllers, vacuum gauges, pressure gauges, manometers and canisters. Quality control guidance for field sampling covers sampling equipment checks, sample handling and quality control. Quality control guidance for laboratory analysis include certified standards, instrument calibration, laboratory control samples, blanks, duplicates, internal standards and surrogate standards. Also addressed are guidelines for field and laboratory documentation. 1 ref., 1 fig., 1 tab.
- OSTI ID:
- 617672
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9605175-; TRN: 98:002112-0055
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: International symposium on measurement of toxic and related air pollutants, Research Triangle Park, NC (United States), 7-10 May 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of Measurement of toxic and related air pollutants; PB: 889 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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