General technical matters

Assists state and local air pollution control agencies and EPA regional offices with technical matters pertaining to health, exposure, and risk assessment of air pollutants. Services are also extended to the general public, small businesses and international agencies. Thursday 8 00 a.m. to 5 00p.m., EST Friday 8 00 a.m. to 4p.m., EST. 

TSCA and the Sixth Amendment are quite different in many important respects, and it would require some fundamental changes to standardize them or even make them consistent. However, because they deal in part with the same general subject matter — Industry notification and government review of new chemicals — and because they may lead to trade barriers and the inefficient use of scarce technical and scientific resources, it is useful to consider how they might be brought closer in line with one another. "Harmonization" is a term commonly applied to such efforts. 

A laboratory finds itself typically at the end of the traceability chain. Therefore, in order to produce traceable results it must be able to rely on all the references necessary in the measurement process, as well as on method validation [5]. A prerequisite for supplying traceable results to the customers is therefore that the values of all references are themselves traceable to stated references and are accompanied by a reliable uncertainty statement. The technical expertise of the laboratory as established by accreditation then must ensure the proper use and handling of these references and of the samples. This is generally a matter of training and expertise. It is particularly useful if there is expertise in the development and adaptation of analytical procedures, as this is much needed in the obligatory validation procedure. 

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