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Procedures for Detection and Quantitation

Technical Workgroup

Federal Advisory Committee on Detection and Quantitation Approaches and Uses in Clean Water Act (CWA) Programs

Summary of Technical Work Group Conference Call #45
January 10, 2007
1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET

The next Technical Work Group call is scheduled for Monday, January 22, 2007 - from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m., ET. The call-in number is 866-299-3188; access code is 202 566 1045#. This was the first Technical Work Group conference call of the year.

Action Items

Triangle will:

Tim Fitzpatrick will send Bob Wheeler some edits to the IMBC document.

Ken Miller will:

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Welcome and Introductions

Bob Wheeler, facilitator, welcomed participants to the call at 1:08 p.m. ET, conducted a roll call of Technical Work Group (TWG) members and observers, and briefly reviewed the agenda for the meeting. He noted the lack of representation on the line and said the group would focus the majority of its time on a discussion of the pilot and direction for the Pilot Analysis Team. Mr. Wheeler mentioned that a copy of the recommendations from the December FACDQ meeting had been sent out to all the FACDQ members and non-members but that if anyone had not received a copy and would like one, to get in contact with Cole Gainer.

Mr. Wheeler then asked Dick Reding to discuss updates on EPA's budget and the upcoming year for the FACDQ. Mr. Reding said that it was going to be a tough year budget wise finishing up the FACDQ but that it is exciting that the lab work is almost complete giving the TWG lots to chew on in the upcoming weeks. He also said that it is very important for the TWG to focus and stick to its two main charges; mining through the pilot data and coming up with recommendations for a procedure(s). He said it was very important to finish those tasks while sticking to EPA's financial constraints.

Bob Wheeler mentioned that in order to assist cutting costs, the Policy Work Group (PWG) would have fewer calls until March with a tentative 1-2 day face to face meeting in Seattle set for sometime in April.

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Meeting Summary Approval

Mr. Wheeler asked for comments to the draft December 13 meeting summary. There were no comments and the group approved the summary as drafted.

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Proposed TWG Schedule and Topics

Mr. Wheeler reviewed the TWG schedule documents and indicated that there were a limited number of calls for the group to be able to complete the pilot study report and make recommendations for FACDQ consideration. After discussing the proposed TWG meeting on January 24, it was rescheduled to January 22 in order to accommodate many of the work group members who would miss the Wednesday date due to travel to Seattle for the Pilot Analysis Team meeting. The TWG call on the Monday, January 22 will focus on developing strategies for the PAT so they can efficiently work through the data results and begin developing the pilot report.

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Pilot Analysis Data and Calculations

Ken Miller told the TWG that he has a current tally of all the labs that have submit data to him and that once it has been reviewed he will send out a file to the group with a current summary of those results. He said that not all the labs have gotten back to him and that some had submitted their results in an inappropriate electronic format making his work more difficult.

Mr. Miller asked the TWG the following questions for guidance and received the following responses:

What limit of outlier removal should be the stopping point for an interlab procedure?
The TWG agreed that 5% would be fine, especially because Ken will conduct one analysis without any outlier removal.
Should multi lab limits be calculated and if so, how?
It was agreed that multi lab limits would be looked at in terms of mean, median and 2σ.

There was some discussion within the group about the necessity of this evaluation with such few data points and whether or not this analysis would properly stand up to the criteria decided by the FACDQ and written in the document "What Do We Need A Procedure To Do." To ease these qualms and maintain focus it was suggested that Mr. Miller, suing input from this TWG discussion, write up a short paragraph explaining his vision regarding the interpretation of data and what he thinks could be accomplished from this. Mr. Miller mentioned that he could have that narrative ready by the next TWG meeting and that he was also working on completing a list of lab comments for the ACIL procedure. He added that some labs have expressed concern over spike levels for silver so he is not using some of that data and also that the LCMRL calculator is dropping out negative numbers and zeroes so he is manually taking time to recalculate these limits.

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Intermittent Method Blank Contamination

Steve Wendelken said that members of EPA would be meeting in the next few days to discuss the Intermittent Blank Contamination document and pool their comments and thoughts. Tim Fitzpatrick said that he would send Mr. Wheeler a copy of some revisions he felt were necessary to the opening of the document and Mr. Wheeler said he would review those and then send them out to the committee. The topic in general would be tabled until the next meeting however the IMBC group was commissioned to consider how the pilot study data might be used to evaluate IMBC.

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Public Comment

There were no public comments.

Wrap-up and Closing

Mr. Wheeler reminded everyone that the next call would be on Monday, January 22 from 1-3 p.m., ET.

He thanked everyone for their time, extending appreciation to the members that were available today, and adjourned the meeting early at 2:13 PM, ET.

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Attendance

Technical Work Group Members

Triangle Associates: Robert Wheeler and Cole Gainer

Observers

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