American Association of Official Analytical Chemists

Majors conducted helpful GC user surveys again in 1995 (13) and 2003 (14). In the 2003 survey, the use of packed columns continued to decline because many packed column gas chromatographic methods have been replaced by equivalent capillary methods. There are now capillary column procedures for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), American Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC), and U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) methods. Despite the increase in capillary column users (91% in 2003 compared to 79% in 1990), there is still a significant number of packed column users, for several reasons (1) packed columns and related supplies and accessories have a substantial presence in catalogs and Web sites of the major column vendors, and (2) the use of packed colunms become apparent to the authors of this text after discussions with attendees in short courses on GC offered at professional meetings. 

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