The assessment of the quality of measurements during the investigation of a contaminated site

The clean up of an industrial site contaminated with chlorinated organic compounds requires the application of rapid screening methods. According to former investigations the chlor-N-soil test (Dexsil corporation, USA) was used, which had been adjusted to our specific analytical needs (1). The objective of this study was to assess the variability of the whole measurement process and to determine the random errors which were caused by the variations in sampling, preparation and analysis of the samples. In addition, duplicate analyses using the soxhlett extraction method were carried out in order to evaluate the systematic error.