Objectives, concept and design of the CEEM soil project

Within the member countries of the European Union, different strategies and guidelines for the sampling and the preparation of soils are used to investigate soil contamination. As a consequence, there is reasonable doubt that the results gained by applying these different strategies and methods are comparable. In general, the relative contribution of sampling and sample preparation to the total uncertainty in soil contamination studies is a subject of speculation than of knowledge. For this purpose, the first European soil sampling inter-comparison test was organised as a project under the Standards, Measurement and Testing Programme of the European Commission. The aim of this project was to analyse and to compare the existing guidelines, the degree and the state of standardisation in this field in the European countries, and to compare their results when applied on the same test area under comparable conditions by representative sampling teams. The results of the project in general demonstrate that sampling and sample preparation errors reach about the same order of magnitude as errors caused in the chemical analysis. However, there are great differences depending on the elements investigated and their concentration ranges, as well as on pedological and land-use conditions in the test area. Consequently, sampling and sample preparation require the same attentiveness and equivalent measures for quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) as the chemical analysis, which has not been the case up to now. Insufficient comparability of the results is illustrated by the fact that different participants arrive at different conclusions for up to 61% of tested soil quality criteria (e.g. threshold levels). The methods and results of the project are presented in detail in the six following papers within this volume. The following 13 papers present some key studies and specific contributions of the participants, as well as synoptical papers of the invited experts in standardisation and accreditation.