Recommended Operating Procedures ROPs

The Recommended Operating Procedures (ROPs) for Sampling and Analysis in the Verification of Chemical Disarmament were proposed by Finland... 

Sample preparation procedures and analytical techniques for the off-site laboratories of the CWC have been developed and tested in five international interlaboratory comparison (round-robin) tests (1 5), in two trial proficiency tests, and in more than 14 official proficiency tests (see Chapter 6). The Recommended Operating Procedures (ROPs) for sampling and sample preparation (6,7) were written and updated on the basis of the results of the round-robin tests. The ROPs (see Table 1) were designed to be comprehensive enough to allow the analysis of all CWC-related chemicals. Accordingly, some of the procedures contain many sample preparation steps. It is also recommended that the ROPs should be used as first choice in the analysis, with other approaches not excluded. 

Table 1. Recommended operating procedures (ROPs) for sampling and sample preparation in the verification of CWC-related chemicals

Below, sample preparation methods of various types of samples will be briefly discussed. The description is based on sample matrices and is not intended to be comprehensive. Sample preparation techniques originally developed for a specific sample type may, however, also be successfully used for another sample matrix. As a result of international round-robin exercises in the field of verification analysis, a number of recommended operating procedures (ROPs) has been published and tested (34). Further testing of these procedures has taken place since 1995 during proficiency testing under the auspices of the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW. These procedures were developed for the analysis of samples with unknown analytes, in order to allow the identification of as many different chemicals of CWC interest as possible. This approach implies that these procedures can be further optimized in cases... 

The laboratory must describe sample preparation and analytical methods in detail or must make reference to Recommended Operating Procedures (ROPs), or Standard Operating procedures (SOPs) or to the validated procedures according to the quahty assur-anoe/quality control (QA/QC) regime of the laboratory. All deviations from the procedures will have to be described in detail. 

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