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Suggestions for Reduction of Analytical Costs by Elimination of Unnecessary Quality Control (QC) Samples
Douglas M. Chatham
5413 Forest Ridge Dr., Loganville, GA 30052-3437 Environmental Specialist and QC Chemist J.M. Waller Associates, Inc. under contract to the U.S. Army Reserve Command, 1401 Deshler Street, SW, Fort McPherson, GA 30330-2000 Web page: http://chatham.home.mindspring.com; e-mail: chatham@mindspring.com

Paper published in the Proceedings of WTQA '99 (15th Annual Waste Testing & Quality Assurance Symposium), pp. 11-14.


A rationale is presented for collecting fewer QC samples for hazardous-waste projects and to encourage project managers and quality assurance project officers to question the need for every QC sample or activity. Many field QC samples can be eliminated from hazardous waste site investigations, resulting in significant analytical cost savings, without any effect on the quality of the overall investigation. The categories of QC samples or analyses which could be reduced include second column confirmations, field blanks, matrix spike and matrix spike duplicates, and duplicate samples. Additional cost reductions could be realized through careful selection of analytical methods and the use of on-site methods, where feasible.

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