A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY FOR THE DETERMINATION OF 48 ELEMENTS IN THE CERTIFICATION OF A HAZARDOUS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL

The certification of standard reference materials is of fundamental im portance for environmental scientists to proceed with their own qualit y control programs or calibration procedures. As part of the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) program, we participated i n the certification of a hazardous waste material. Our efforts concent rated on judiciously using thermal and epithermal neutron activation a nalysis in conjunction with Compton suppression techniques. We have de monstrated that besides lowering the detection limit for several eleme nts usually not reported by conventional NAA, Compton suppression is i deally suited to substantially reduce certain spectral interferences. A detailed comprehensive study was undertaken using this method to hig hlight which isotopes can be most favorably used.