Evaluation of Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Arsenic (As), Nickel (Ni) field comparison 2018 in Ispra (IT)
Within the quality assurance programme for air quality monitoring in Europe the JRC European Reference Laboratory for Air Pollution (ERLAP) organises Inter-Laboratory Comparison Exercises (ILC) for EU national air quality reference laboratories.
An ILC for the determination of PM (particulate matter) mass concentration (PM10 and PM2.5) and metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, nickel) was organised at European level in 2018. Such an ILC comprises the comparison between the PM samplers, the subsequent weighing procedures and further analysis of sampled filters used by the various participants.
Samplers are therefore co-located for several days so that the number of test samples is large enough for statistical analyses. Thanks to the interest for this type of ILC and to the commitment from the AQUILA Network members, 27 Laboratories plus the European Reference Laboratory for Air Pollution deployed their instruments at a single place inside the premises of the Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy) during the same period of time (18 January – 14 March 2018). 28 samplers and one automatic analyser for PM10 and 23 samplers and one automatic analyser for PM2.5 collected ambient aerosol samples during a period of eight weeks.
During this PM sampling campaign 13 laboratories agreed on performing subsequent metal analysis to verify the performance of their analytical method for the determination of metal concentration in ambient air. The samples for this analysis were collected from the 15th of February till the 14th of March 2018.
The scope of this inter-laboratory comparison was to assess the robustness of the measurement process and to determine the performance of the participants’ procedures. For this ILC a simplified statistical analysis is reported.
The assigned daily values were calculated as the robust average of all participants.
The statistical evaluation included the reproducibility calculation, straggler and outlier identification.
The exercise offered a unique opportunity to compare, between the participants, the whole analytical process from sampling to measurement step.
All As. Cd, Ni, Pb concentrations were far below any limit or target value concentration. Despite the fact that the metals concentrations were very low the performance of all laboratories can be considered as excellent.
BARBIERE Maurizio;
LAGLER Friedrich;
BOROWIAK Annette;
2020-12-04
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC122018
978-92-76-23987-1 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 30421 EN,
OP KJ-NA-30421-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC122018,
10.2760/25657 (online),
Additional supporting files
| File name | Description | File type | |
|---|
