Environmental Contamination

During the course of a sample preparation, contamination can occur from the environment, the reagents, the apparatus, and even the analyst. In many cases the blank determines the lower limit of detection. The next several parts of this guide deal with contamination.

Overview

Environmental contamination is caused by particulate and/or gaseous matter in the air. It has been reported that air in an analytical laboratory can contain up to 200 µg/m³ of particulate matter containing Ca, Si, Fe, Na, Mg, K, Tl, Cu, Mn, and lesser amounts of other elements¹. In addition, this reference states that normal rural area airborne particle counts have been reported to be 1,400,000/m³ for particles greater than 0.5 µm and that normal metropolitan area particle counts have been reported to be 53,000,000/m³ for particles greater than 0.5 µm.

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