Modern, industrialized societies depend on a wide range of chemical substances such as fuels, plastics, biocides, pharmaceuticals and detergents for maintaining the high quality lifestyle to which we aspire. The challenge is to ensure that while weenjoythebene?tsofthesesubstances, theirinevitablereleaseintoourbiosphere does not result in unwanted human and ecosystem exposures, and the risk of - verse effects. One response to this challenge has been the extensive effort to detect and analyze or monitor a multitude of chemicals in a variety of environmental media, especially toxic organic...

This book provides descriptions of current laboratory accreditation schemes and explains why these schemes fall short of assuring data purchasers that the data produced from accredited laboratories are always quality products. The book then presents a system for laboratory accreditation in conjunction with data certification that assures data purchasers their data are useful for the purposes for which they are intended. Simple quality assurance and quality control techniques, in addition to concepts of total quality management, are described and then applied to the environmental laboratory...