Quality assurance for environmental monitoring programs

Abstract

There are three essential elements of a quality assurance program; a quality assurance management plan, internal quality control measures and external quality assessment including an audit scheme. It is the program managers responsibility to ensure that these activities are clearly defined and documented and that individuals are assigned responsibility for their implementation and are held accountable. A generic quality assurance program is described with an outline of the main component elements.

Keywords:

• Environmental monitoring
• interlaboratory comparison
• quality assurance
• quality control
• quality management
• reference materials