Hi all…I’ve come across a USEPA document entitled “Sampling Guidance for Unknown Contaminants in Drinking Water” in 2017. It is one of those guidance documents which you don’t need until you are in an emergency situation but don’t know it exists. It “provides comprehensive guidance that integrates recommendations for pathogen, toxin, chemical, and radiochemical sample collection, preservation, and transport procedures to support multiple analytical approaches for the detection and identification of potential contaminants in drinking water.”
It can be freely downloaded at: https://www.epa.gov/waterlabnetwork/sampling-guidance-unknown-contaminants-drinking-water
Bill
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Sampling Guidance for Unknown Contaminants in Drinking Water
EPA-817R-08-003 (2017)
Section 1.0 Introduction
“This Sampling Guidance for Unknown Contaminants in Drinking Water provides comprehensive guidance that integrates recommendations for pathogen, toxin, chemical, and radiochemical sample collection, preservation, and transport procedures to support multiple analytical approaches for the detection and identification of potential contaminants in drinking water. The guidance is intended to support sampling for routine and baseline monitoring to determine background concentrations of naturally occurring contaminants, sampling in response to a contamination event, and sampling in support of remediation or decontamination efforts. The primary intended audience of this guidance document is drinking water utilities, but it may also be a useful reference for emergency response personnel, water teams, and laboratories.”
“This book is problem-oriented and works from practice to theory, covering most of the information you will need, such as (a) obtaining flow data and working with the concept of loading, (b) organizing sampling programmes and measurements, (c) connecting laboratory analysis to data management, (e) using numerical and graphical methods for describing monitoring data (descriptive statistics), (f) understanding and reporting removal efficiencies, (g) recognizing symmetry and asymmetry in monitoring data (normal and log-normal distributions), (h) evaluating compliance with targets and regulatory standards for effluents and water bodies, (i) making comparisons with the monitoring data (tests of hypothesis), (j) understanding the relationship between monitoring variables (correlation and regression analysis), (k) making water and mass balances, (l) understanding the different loading rates applied to treatment units, (m) learning the principles of reaction kinetics and reactor hydraulics and (n) performing calibration and verification of models.”
The major concepts are illustrated by 92 fully worked-out examples, which are supported by 75 freely-downloadable Excel spreadsheets. Each chapter concludes with a checklist for your report. If you are a student, researcher or practitioner planning to use or already using treatment plant and water quality monitoring data, then this book is for you!”
