Career Path > Safety
Low Vol Samplers
croyce:
Thanks Slo Glo. That's the kind of info I'm looking for.
To GLW mars88 is correct. I am doing an independent investigation of their procedures. I have their procedures- sampling, QA and PMs and have reviewed them. Just trying to see what everyone else is doing as well. There is no hard fast regulatory rule to sampling so long as you can prove the quality of the data you have at the end of the day.
The group I am looking at has older analog equipment which provides no indication of failure other than time recorded. It's been my practice to check on my lo vols daily even though I'm not pulling a sample but weekly or longer. But all of my experience deploying lo vols has been in responses and not a long term standing program. I have some end date in mind that I will be securing the lo vol. In places that I have long standing or permanent systems we have installed communicaitons to a central control to verify the system is running. In addition my samplers record total volume collected, so if I loose failure I still have a sample that I can characterize activity concentrations with some known quality. I can see how it can get difficult, costly and time consuming to check a lo vol every day for a long standing system.
Thanks for the comments. If anyone does it differently please let me know.
GLW:
--- Quote from: croyce on Apr 09, 2014, 08:49 ---
...To GLW mars88 is correct. I am doing an independent investigation of their procedures. I have their procedures- sampling, QA and PMs and have reviewed them. Just trying to see what everyone else is doing as well. There is no hard fast regulatory rule to sampling so long as you can prove the quality of the data you have at the end of the day....
--- End quote ---
Well in that case utilize the historically contemporary to analog equipment EPA ISC atmospheric dispersion model to determine your atmospheric transport and diffusion of radioactive materials with subsequent appropriate sampler locations. Follow that with one or two remote locations not affected by releases from the facilities operations. Under previous EPA expectations analog equipment should ensure a constant flow rate via flow controllers. The sample rate and volume are continuously measured throughout the sampling interval using a mass flow meter/flow totalizer. Typical flow variances should not exceed 30% across the sampling period. Validation is implemented by acquiring duplicate samples utilizing high-volume samplers operated at a minimum of one sampling site per day. These high volume duplicate samplers are collocated with the sampling sites of record and will be completely independent of the operation of the permanent sampling system. The duplicate sampling trains are periodically relocated among the sampling sites and operated on a schedule consistent with the operating sampling systems. This old but still defensible protocol should give you enough defensible basis to independently endorse the sites' protocols or suggest improvements.
You should have no trouble gaining access to these older EPA codes.
GLW:
--- Quote from: GLW on Apr 09, 2014, 10:11 ---Well in that case....
--- End quote ---
or not,... :P ;) :) 8)
croyce:
Thanks for your help.
SCMasterchef:
No disrespect made to the comments, all are good. Since you are doing an independent verification of the clients data and analysis processes, would it not be that to validate the results of your study versus their sample results that the same conditions and standards would apply. With this in mind I think that the frequency of which you crosscheck your sample operation is irrelevent. If power outages do occur and you are aware of these outages, the question would be, is the client adjusting results to account for the outage or are they simply ignoring the time differences and using the flow data based on actual sampling time? If the client's air samplers automatically restart when the power supply is reactivated then the volume is still correct but the run time would differ. I would think that you, if the same power outage affected your samplers would be forced to do the same to keep data acquisition dynamics the same thus providing the same operating parameters.
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