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Last Updated:
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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McCampbell Analytical News for 2003 & 2004
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In years 2003-2004 our laboratory achieved State of California certification for an
extensive group of "Wet Chemical" tests. These include titrimetric methodologies like
alkalinity & speciated chlorine, distillation followed by spectrophotometry such as
cyanide, phenolics & ammonia, post-combustion analyses including TOC,
Total Nitrogen & Total Sulfur, digestion followed by spectrophotometry such as
Total Phosphorous & TKN, and a gamut of simpler tests including color, odor, TDS,
MBAS, CTAS, Tannin & Lignin and UV
254
. Please see our Environmental Wet Chemistry section for more details. Our
laboratory has attempted to be comprehensive within the environmental industry for
these types of tests & will set up for new ones at a reasonable cost. We will also
use methods published outside of the EPA & Standard Methods such as those for
Cationic Surfactants & Hydrogen Peroxide as well as those published by the AOAC.
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Another direction in which we expanded during the past two years has been the inclusion of
food & beverage matrices to our already extensive pesticide testing abilities. Our State of
California certification included CDFA (California Department of Food & Agriculture)
performance evaluation tests and we now test all types of food and produce for pesticides
and herbicides. Nonylphenol dispersant, Acrolein, & 3-Hydroxypropanal algaecides have recently
been added to our pesticide capabilities. Refer to our Environmental Pesticide section target
lists to view the over 300 compounds that we test. Again, new analytes can be added at
reasonable cost.
In 2003-2004 we also began testing for bacteria, including Total Coliform, E Coli,
Heterotrophs & Enterococci. Our lab automatically confirms Total Coliform positives with
E Coli. In the upcoming two years you can expect to see MAI perform much more elaborate and
diversified testing in this field.
Numberical criteria have not yet been established by the state of California for the
evaluation of TPH (g /d /mo, etc.) contamination, but it is thought that either the
internet published "TPH Criteria Working Group" or the "Massachusetts DEP" criteria will be
adopted for this purpose. Although the two methods differ substantially in detail, both
require bench chromatographic separation of aromatics from aliphatics & subsequent GC analysis
of these fractions with quantitation over narrow carbon ranges. Our lab has successfully
separated benzene thru PAH aromatics from hexane thru C35 aliphatics and we are able to
routinely perform both the TPHCWG & the MA DEP methods.
Last but not least, we now have ICP-MS capabilities, having purchased a new Agilent 7500
cs
. It is a thing of beauty. Our routine reporting limit for heavy metals is 0.5 ug / L (ppb),
0.05 for Hg, in water samples & we can go lower. We also now have Hg AFS (Atomic Fluorescence
Spectroscopy) capability to 0.5 ppt.
Bon Journo,
Edward Hamilton, Lab Director for MAI
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2005 Newsletters
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