Hazel Davidson
In addition, accredited laboratories all participate in proficiency testing schemes such as Contest and Aquacheck, and this data should be available on request from the laboratory. Again, checking the range of parameters in which the laboratory participates is important – some will not submit data for the more difficult analyses because of the risk of a failed ‘Z’ score.
Deviating (or non-conforming) samples A recent policy statement from UKAS now requires laboratories to highlight deviating samples in their reports. These are samples which are either not sampled correctly or experience analytical problems, for example:
Environmental Analysis - recent changes and future requirements
In this article, Hazel Davidson, Technical Manager at ALcontrol Laboratories, examines the dual impacts of the credit crunch and ever more stringent EU legislation in the environmental analysis market. She also outlines the most important issues to consider when selecting a laboratory, to ensure the most reliable, meaningful, and cost effective data.
Accreditation Laboratories should be accredited to both ISO 17025 and to MCERTS (the Environment Agency’s Monitoring Certification Scheme) for the appropriate materials (soil, air, water). Methods are accredited individually and it is also important to ensure that the scope of accredited testing covers a wide range of parameters, because some laboratories are only accredited for a very limited number of tests.
MCERTS for waters came into effect in July 2010, but only for urban waste waters (UWW) – wastewater treatment, sewage and some trade effluents. It is expected that the Environment Agency (EA) will extend this to more trade effluents in 2011 and possibly other environmental waters at a later date.
An important component of this standard is the requirement for organisations performing the sampling of these waters to be accredited to ISO 17025 to ensure that the correct procedures are followed in a controlled and documented manner.
|110| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
• No separate volatile container supplied • Headspace present in volatile or BOD container • No preserved bottles supplied • Holding time exceeded • Temperature exceeded • No sampling date supplied (mandatory for MCERTS) • AQC failed during run and sample cannot be repeated • Deviation from method, e.g. limited sample size or matrix issues
The onus is now on the consultant/contractor to ensure that samples are taken correctly, because non- conforming samples may invalidate the integrity of the data.
Legislation and Standards The Water Framework Directive seeks to ensure that all river basin management systems should achieve ‘good’ status by 2015 and has had a major impact on water monitoring. Various daughter directives have arisen, such as bathing waters, and a directive covering groundwaters was published in August 2010.
The EA also recently published the updated version of Hydrogeological Risk Assessments for Landfills and the Derivation of Groundwater Control Levels and Compliance Limits, which replaces the 2003 version, and includes a tiered approach to risk assessment.
Another standard recently published is the ‘UKWIR (2010) Guidance for the Selection of Water Supply Pipes to be used in Brownfield Sites’. Again, an extensive list of potential contaminants is listed.
These documents include annexes listing the priority pollutants and recommended limits of detection, which may be difficult for laboratories to achieve, particularly with very contaminated matrices. Methods such as GCMS/MS or HPLC/MS are used to reach very low detection limits and larger sample volumes may be required. In the current economic climate, it may be difficult for smaller laboratories to obtain funding for the purchase of these very expensive instruments. This may cause an increased polarisation of the industry, with
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