Sediments quality assurance

Bayona JM (1995) Development of supercritical fluid extraction procedures for the determination of organotin compounds in sediment. In Quevauviller Ph, Maier EA, and Griepink B, eds. Quality assurance for environmental analysis, pp 465-487. Elsevier, Amsterdam. 

For long-term quality assurance of drinking water reserves in large karst areas, the chemical characteristics of different soils, rocks, stream sediments and aquifers are analyzed with respect to... 

Oehme, M., et al. (1993). The ultra trace analysis of polychlorinated dibenzop-dioxins and diben-zofurans in sediments from the Arctic (Barents Sea) and Northern North Sea. Methodology and quality assurance. Analytical methods and instrumentation, 1, 153-163. 

Ocean Data Evaluation System (ODES) Data Submissions Manual QA/QC Guidance for Sampling and Analysis of Sediments Water and Tissue for Dredged Material Evaluations Chemical Evaluations Quality Assurance Plan for the National Pesticide Survey of Drinking Water Wells Analytical Method 2, Chlorinated Pesticides Quality Assurance Project Plan for Analytical Control and Assessment Activities in the National Study of Chemical Residues in Lake Fish Tissue... 

Quality Assurance/Quality Control. QA/QC measures included field blanks, solvent blanks, method blanks, matrix spikes, and surrogates. Percent recovery was determined using three surrogate compounds (nitrobenzene-d5, 2-fluorobiphenyl, d-terphenyl-diQ and matrix spikes (naphthalene, pyrene, benzo[ghi]perylene) the recoveries ranged from 80 to 102%. Separate calibration models were built for each of the 16 PAHs using internal standards (naphthalene-dg, phenanthrene-dio, perylene-di2). Validation was performed using a contaminated river sediment (SRM 1944) obtained from NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) accuracy was <20% for each of the 16 analytes. 

As part of this field study, relevant quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) criteria and guidelines (SETAC, 1993 JAMP, 1998a,b) have to be set to insure the quality of data generated during the assessments. The development of QA/QC criteria for this study involved conducting a series of replicate bioassays with each of the methods. Samples tested included a control sediment, contaminated sediments and reference toxicants. Based on the results of the bioassay replicates, the variability associated with the tests was quantified and we were able to determine what we considered acceptable QA/QC criteria for these methods. 

Schipper, C.A., Strorrkhorst, J. and Ciarelli S. Quality assurance of marine sediment toxicity tests. SETAC North America annual meeting 1999, Philadelphia, USA. 

Quality attributes of food emulsions, such as appearance, stability, and rheology, are strongly influenced by the size of the droplets that they contain (Friberg and Larsson, 1997 McClements, 1999). For example, the creaming stability of an emulsion decreases as droplet size increases. Analytical techniques that provide quantitative information about droplet size are therefore required to aid in the development and production of high-quality emulsion-based food products. A variety of analytical techniques have been developed to measure droplet size, e.g., laser diffraction, electrical pulse counting, sedimentation techniques, and ultrasonic spectrometry (McClements, 1999). These techniques are used for fundamental research, product development, and quality assurance. This unit focuses on the two most commonly used techniques in the food industry, laser diffraction and electrical pulse counting. 

Sediment samples are collected synoptically from both exposed and reference areas (e.g., by the use of remote grab samplers operated from a vessel, or using divers for locations where grab sampling is impractical). Spatial heterogeneity in sediment contamination and toxicity render coincident sampling extremely difficult to interpret, and such sampling is not recommended. Appropriate quality assurance /... 

Calle, M.B. de la, Scerbo, R., Chiavarini, S., Quevauviller, Ph. and Morabito, R. (1997) Comparison of derivatization methods for the determination of butyl- and phenyl-tin compounds in mussels by gas chromatography. Appl. Organometal. Chem., 11, 693. Cimara, C., Cobo, M.G., Palacios, M.A., Munoz, R. and Donard, O.FX. (1996) Selenium speciation analyses in water and sediment matrices. In Quality Assurance for Environmental Analysis (eds Quevauviller, Ph., Maier, E.A. and Griepink, B.), Vol. 10. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 237. 

The project proponent is responsible for tlie quality assurance review of data generated in any sediment investigation. There are two levels of quality assurance review applicable for sediment data. On the first level a review of bioassay data covers field and reporting elements and evaluates the acceptability of test results for positive controls, negative controls, reference sediment, replicates and experimental conditions (temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen). Detailed guidance on review procedures is available from Ecology (2003). 

The second level represents a more vigorous level of quality assurance review, and is appropriate for sediment data that are to be used for the development of numerical chemical criteria or the derivation of effect classes (Ahlf and Heise, 2005). Such a review is also recommended in cases where the data may be used in litigation. We expect a more complex envuonmental scene investigation in future, due to the fact that point sources are less important titan diffuse ones, and all lines of evidence have to be used to characterise die environmental impact (Wenning et al., 2004). 

Ahlf, W. and Heise, S. (2007) Quality assurance of ecotoxicological sediment analysis. In Westrich, B. and Forstner, U. (eds) Sediment Dynamics and Pollutant Mobility in Rivers An Interdisciplinary Approach, Springer, Berlin, Germany, Chapter 10.1, pp. 380-391. 

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