PMID- 27993074
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20170608
LR  - 20180724
IS  - 1520-5851 (Electronic)
IS  - 0013-936X (Linking)
VI  - 50
IP  - 24
DP  - 2016 Dec 20
TI  - Precision of Atmospheric Persistent Organic Pollutant Concentration Measurements.
PG  - 13464-13469
AB  - Environmental measurement programs are often undertaken with the assumption that 
      measurements at a given location will be comparable to others that would be 
      observed at the same time in the immediate vicinity, but this assumption has 
      seldom been tested. This paper does so. We discuss here the precision of 
      atmospheric concentration measurements of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) 
      near the North American Great Lakes-measurements that we have been conducting 
      since 1994. We report the relative percent differences between the measured 
      values for 100-200 duplicate samples, and through our use of surrogate (recovery) 
      standards, we have separated the analytical error from the sampling error for the 
      target compounds. The error contributions we calculated were on the order of 5% 
      for the analytical error and 20% for the sampling error, suggesting that the 
      latter is the greatest hindrance to increased precision. In a comparison of 
      relative percent differences for measurements among different atmospheric phases, 
      we observed the highest errors for precipitation samples, with an average median 
      of 35 +/- 3, which is more than for vapor-phase samples (27 +/- 3) or particle-phase 
      samples (27 +/- 2). We suggest that sampling errors are principally the result of 
      inaccuracies in measuring the sample volume and possibly the result of spatial 
      heterogeneity of the atmosphere.
FAU - Lehman, Daniel C
AU  - Lehman DC
AD  - School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University , Bloomington, 
      Indiana 47405, United States.
FAU - Bays, James C
AU  - Bays JC
AD  - School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University , Bloomington, 
      Indiana 47405, United States.
FAU - Hites, Ronald A
AU  - Hites RA
AUID- ORCID: 0000-0003-0975-5058
AD  - School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University , Bloomington, 
      Indiana 47405, United States.
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
DEP - 20161205
PL  - United States
TA  - Environ Sci Technol
JT  - Environmental science & technology
JID - 0213155
RN  - 0 (Air Pollutants)
SB  - IM
MH  - *Air Pollutants
MH  - Atmosphere
MH  - *Environmental Monitoring
MH  - Lakes
MH  - Time
EDAT- 2016/12/21 06:00
MHDA- 2017/06/09 06:00
CRDT- 2016/12/21 06:00
PHST- 2016/12/21 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2016/12/21 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2017/06/09 06:00 [medline]
AID - 10.1021/acs.est.6b04428 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Environ Sci Technol. 2016 Dec 20;50(24):13464-13469. doi: 
      10.1021/acs.est.6b04428. Epub 2016 Dec 5.