THE 1994 QUASIMEME LABORATORY PERFORMANCE STUDIES - CHLOROBIPHENYLS AND ORGANOCHLORINE PESTICIDES IN FISH AND SEDIMENT

Two laboratory-performance studies have been undertaken to improve the measurement of chlorobiphenyls (CBs) and organochlorine pesticides (O CPs) in marine sediments and biota as part of the QUASIMEME EU-Standar ds, Measurements and Testing) project's on-going Laboratory Testing Sc heme, Forty and 38 laboratories, respectively, participated in the two exercises, A considerable improvement was obtained in the long-term p recision of the participating laboratories, The between laboratory var iance for the determination of CBs and OCPs in the cod Liver homogenat e and dried sediment samples was, however, too high for the rather dem anding requirements of international monitoring programmes, Detection of a 50% change in concentration of CBs is a minimum requirement for s uch programmes, whereas currently detection of a 100% change in concen tration would maybe just be possible for some analyses in sediments an d cod liver, Several individual laboratories performed, however, consi derably better compared to the group performance, A number of improvem ents such as optimization of the temperature programme of the GC analy sis, a larger sample intake and treatment of coextracted interferences is recommended. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd