ABSTRACT
Measurement results play a major role in the areas of environmental quality monitoring, environmental protection, environmental pollution, exploitation of water, mineral, and energy resources, and consumers’ health protection. Proficiency testing (PT) is a type of External quality control applied to evaluate laboratory accuracy. In the United States, the environmental laws and regulations constitute the driving forces behind almost all the environmental sampling and analytical work. Exposure to nonpathogenic, toxic contaminants creates a significant risk to human health and ecosystem integrity. Laboratories performing tests in the environmental field have to develop an adequate PT participation strategy. Several Proficiency testing schemes (PTS) providers do not perform stability studies on the distributed samples or fail to predict the metabolites of the analyte, which is required to be determined. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons organizes PTSs on a regular basis in the field of environmental analyses for the presence of scheduled compounds and their metabolites.
