Central Pollution Control Board

CHAPTER VII

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH

Research and development activities play a major role in assessment and control of pollution. The important research activities carried out during the year 1999-2000 in various fields like environmental monitoring, pollution assessment, pollution control, treatability studies, standardisation of analytical techniques, analytical quality control (AQC); continuous monitoring of air and water quality and meteorological studies are summarised below.

7.1 Analytical Quality Control (AQC/Water) for the Laboratories of Pollution Control Boards/ Committees and EPA Recognised Laboratories

A particular Water Quality study or any organized water quality monitoring programme involves the collection, comparison and interpretation of analytical data, which leads to a decision - making approach. The correctness of decision or action depends largely upon the accuracy of the analytical results. If the errors of the analytical results are high, the manpower, material and money spent on any monitoring programme or study would be futile and further leads to wrong decision and improper action plans. Since the success and usefulness of all these information systems derived from analysis results, depend on the quality of input data, it is essential to ensure that adequate comparability and accuracy of analytical results are maintained. Keeping this fact in view, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) initiated regular and organised Analytical Quality Control (AQC) programme for the laboratories of State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), Pollution Control Committees (PCCs) and laboratories recognised under Environment (Protection) Act from 1991 onwards as a continuous project activity with the following objectives.

To assess the status of analytical facilities and expertise of the participating laboratories.
To identify the serious constraints (random & systematic) in the working environment of laboratories.
To provide necessary assistance and guidance to the concerned laboratories to overcome the difficulties in the analytical methods.
To validate the Water Quality Monitoring data.
To promote the scientific/analytical competence of the participating laboratories to the level of excellence for better output.
To improve the internal and external quality control of the laboratories of Central and State Pollution Control Boards and also others in an organised manner.

Under this project, 15 slots of AQC exercises were carried out upto March, 2000.

There are 20 parameters, covered in 2 slots of exercises to reduce analytical work load, in one year period, to make it as one full round. Thus, so far, as on 31st March 2000, seven rounds of exercises were completed covering 15 to 20 parameters.

The acceptable limits for various parameters are arrived using "youden 2 sample plot" method. The analytical data is processed using software "PROLAB" developed by Dr. S. Uhlig, Professor in Statistics, Germany for various applications using ISO, DIN, Q- method/ Huber estimator, Youden, Z- scores and other robust statistical methods. This software has been procured under Indo-GTZ bilateral Programme and offered to CPCB for use in Quality Assurance programme.

In general, the performance of the laboratories for various parameters in the decreasing order of magnitude is as follows:

Chlorides, Total Hardness, Calcium, Boron, Potassium, Total Dissolved solids, Conductivity, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Sodium, Ammonical Nitrogen, Chromium, Magnesium, Fluoride, Sulphate, Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen, Nitrate-N, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Fixed Dissolved solids, Total Suspended Solids, Phosphate-P

The AQC exercises are conducted routinely by Central Pollution Control Board for improving the analytical capabilities of the concerned laboratories besides enhancing integrity of generated analytical data.