Interpretation of Organic Data - Softcover

Roy Keith Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890911194 ISBN 13: 9781890911195

Publisher: Genium Pub Corp, 2000

Synopsis

The EPA is saying that they're ready to move to a Performance Based Measurement System (PBMS) philosophy. Is your lab's QA/QC ready?

The analysis of environmental samples must contend with variability. The key to consistent defendable results is understanding and controlling that variability. That is the underlying principle behind any QA/QC program. The PBMS philosophy makes it your responsibility to understand, monitor, and control the elements that may effect a good analysis. If you can do that, then you can be confident that the results you present actually show what was in the environmental sample.

In this new book, Dr. Roy-Keith Smith takes you back to the principles of quality assurance and quality control and applies them to the analysis of environmental samples. Starting with sample preparation, he proceeds through instrument preparation and calibration, then to instrument performance, and finally to the actual presentation of the results. Along the way he makes sure that you understand and consider the important factors that might affect results such as matrix interference and laboratory contamination.

For the readers that work in a laboratory, this book focuses your thinking about how you conduct analysis and guides you toward establishing an appropriate framework within which to conduct your work. It accomplishes this by concentrating on why the quality control is performed. For final users of data, this book provides you with the fundamental understanding necessary to follow what went on in the laboratory with your sample.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction and Preface

I have in other books tried to present in considerable detail the requirements for acceptable analysis of environmental samples. I have divided these requirements into the categories of analytically valid and legally defensible, and spent about equal time writing on each. The term "evaluation" has been used to mean analytical worth of data and "validation" to describe the legal compliance side. However in practice what I have noticed in the environmental industry is that some persons who review data tend to spend a lot more time on the legal acceptability rather than the analytical utility of results. There are many reasons for this. It's easier to know and apply the dictates of "thou shall" and "thou shall not". Validation of results for these dictates tend to be more of a book keeping exercise and I may have been as guilty as any other in drawing attention to this essential component of data acceptability.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently in the process of debating and adopting the Performance Based Measurement System (PBMS) as a paradigm for environmental analysis. In PBMS good science is stressed. This places an extra burden on persons reviewing data, as they have to be able to recognize what is good science and what is not. My attempt in this book is to describe what is good science and what is not within the context of organic analysis under PBMS.

Edition details

• Publisher: Genium Pub Corp
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1890911194
• ISBN 13: 9781890911195
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150