ABSTRACT
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) wastewater sampling handbook published three decades ago lists four basic factors that affect the quality of environmental data-sample collection, sample preservation, analyses, and recording, and warns that improper actions in any one of these “may result in poor data from which poor judgements are certain” [1]. That advice is as relevant today as it was then-the quality of output from an environmental sampling project is limited by whichever is the weakest component-whether that occurs during sampling or analysis.
