A NALVT ICA L EDITORIAL
September 1972, Vol. 44, No. 11 Editor: HERBERT A. LAITINEN
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Analytical Chemistry in Environmental Science VI. The Pros and Cons of Standard Methods IF rn FOCUS on the legal aspects of pollution control, there is no doubt about the necessity for exactly specified test methods. It would be difficult to enforce a penalty for violation of a statute without a specification of the method to be used to determine whether a violation had, in fact, occurred. Standard methods have, of course, been used for many years in commerce. Whenever the value of a commodity is directly related to its composition, standards methods are absolutely necessary for orderly business transactions. In fact, it is more important for buyer and seller to have an arbitrary but uniform test procedure than to have the absolute truth. Standard methods have been evolved through cooperative programs of comparative tests that require a great deal of effort and expense and often require agonizing periods of time. After a method has passed preliminary scrutiny by committees of the accrediting body such as ASTX, the time-honored “round robin” procedure of interlaboratory comparisons requires painstaking effort in sample preparation, storage, shipment, analysis, and statistical evaluation of data. For air and water pollution monitoring, the interlaboratory test program is complicated ,by another factor, namely the difficulty of sending samples to cooperating laboratories. I n its “Project Threshold” for air pollution monitoring, ASTM has sent teams of analysts with their equipment to a succession of sampling sites at different seasons to circumvent the sampling storage and shipment problem. When a new analytical method appears upon the scene, the procedures for replacing old methods are cumbersome and time consuming. It is difficult enough to replace standard methods in commercial compilations, let alone revising test methods that have been written into the law. When we consider the research aspects of analysis, we see another negative aspect to the standardization of methods. The expense of carrying out a program of evaluation and validation of test methods is naturally considered a part of the cost of the total analytical effort. It stands to reason, therefore, that effort thus expended will have a depressing effect on expenditure for research into new methods. I n some laboratories much more effort is expended on the validation of inferior methods than is spent on the development of potentially superior ones. Standard methods undeniably have an essential role to play in environmental science, as in other applications of analytical chemistry. Every effort should be made, however, to facilitate the introduction of alternate methods and to encourage the development of new approaches.
For submission of manuscripts, see page 4 A . ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 44, NO. 11, SEPTEMBER 1972
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