Guidelines For Air Sampling And Analytical Methods And Evaluation

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (Public Law 91-596) charged the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) with the responsibility for the development and evaluation of sampling and analytical methods for workplace compliance determinations. Under that charge, NIOSH and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration jointly undertook the evaluation of sampling and analytical methods for airborne contaminants by contract in 1974 to determine if methods met the criterion to produce a result that falls within 25% of the true value 95 times out of 100. This guideline document further expands the experimental protocol used during this initial methods development and evaluation research.

The expirements listed in this document include determination of analytical recovery from the sampler, sampler capacity, storage stability of samples, and effect of environmental factors. Also included are evaluation criteria for the expirements and details for the circulation of bias, precision and accuracy.