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Determination of site‐specific effluent detection limits
Author(s) -
Neserke George,
Taylor Harold
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
water environment research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1554-7531
pISSN - 1061-4303
DOI - 10.2175/106143096x127262
Subject(s) - detection limit , effluent , limit (mathematics) , mercury (programming language) , environmental science , relative standard deviation , statistic , wastewater , statistics , mathematics , environmental engineering , environmental chemistry , chemistry , computer science , mathematical analysis , programming language
A solution is proposed for the practical problems of regulatory compliance with toxic metals standards that are lower than the method detection limit. Samples of wastewater treatment plant effluent were analyzed for five different metals by four different laboratories. A two‐way analysis of variance was used to estimate the standard deviation that was multiplied by the appropriate Student's t test statistic. The result is the interlaboratory method detection limit (IMDL). The IMDL was then added to the chronic permit limit to find the regulatory compliance limit. Although the values found for silver and mercury were slightly higher than the previously used method detection limit. they did not equal the estimate of practical quantitation limit as previously described in the literature.