Summary of the NIOSH guidelines for air sampling and analytical method development and evaluation

Suggested guidelines for the development and evaluation of sampling and analytical methods for industrial hygiene monitoring have recently been published in a NIOSH technical report. These guidelines are based in part on various published approaches for method development and evaluation and serve as an attempt at a more unified experimental approach. This paper presents some salient features of this unified approach for method development and evaluation. The basic goal of the approach is to determine if the method under study meets the criterion to produce a result that fell within 25% of the true value 95 times out of 100 on average, although other factors of method performance are evaluated. The experiments proposed for the evaluation of method performance include determination of analytical recovery from the sampler, sampler capacity, storage stability of samples and effect of environmental factors. Evaluation criteria for the experimental data and procedures for the calculation of method bias, precision and accuracy are also included.