Meeting Quality Control Requirements in the Routine Inorganic Laboratory

摘要

Production laboratories struggle with how best to provide both quality and efficient data for decision-making. The quality control requirements of different EPA programs sometimes add additional burdens to laboratories trying to efficiently combine analyses from several programs in the same autosampler tray. Small laboratories, such as municipal wastewater treatment plants, limited by personnel and time are often at the greatest disadvantage. Understanding the need for quality control as well as finding the best presentation of this data can be a daunting task. Several software-based functions can help with this quality control (QC) data collection and charting. The need for quality control monitoring and charts in inorganic wastewater analyses will be discussed as it pertains to Atomic Absorption (AA) data. QC requirements by the US EPA for AA methods require that there be an initial demonstration of the laboratory instrument capability including: (1) calibration range determination (2) analysis of quality control samples (3) determination of detection limits.