TY - JOUR A1 - Dorgerloh, Ute A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Lutz, A. A1 - Bremser, Wolfram A1 - Hilbert, S. A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - How to improve reliability in groundwater analysis: over a decade of experience with external quality control in field campaigns on volatile halogenated compounds N2 - The reliability in measurement results obtained during environmental monitoring is crucial for the assessment and further planning of remediation efforts on the respective contaminated sites by the responsible authorities. A case study concerned with groundwater contaminated with perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene and 1,1,2-trichlorotrifluoroethane including their degradation products which involves private contract laboratories and an independent provider of quality assurance (QA) is presented. The experience gained with biannual monitoring campaigns over 14 years indicates that the selection of contractors on basis of accreditation status and successful performance in interlaboratory comparisons are not sufficient. Rather the auditing of the contractors by the QA provider prior to each campaign and the crosschecking of selected monitoring samples by the QA provider led to a lasting improvement of reliability in the contractors' measurement results. A mean deviation of 20% from the reference value determined by the QA provider for the crosschecked samples was reached. KW - Groundwater monitoring KW - External quality management KW - QM KW - VOC PY - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/c1em10460h SN - 1464-0325 SN - 1464-0333 VL - 14 IS - 1 SP - 217 EP - 223 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Cambridge AN - OPUS4-25288 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -