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Implementing MCERTS for the chemical testing of effluents – Essential statistics (TRMC08)

The Environment Agency established its Monitoring Certification Scheme (MCERTS) to ensure the delivery of high quality environmental measurements. The MCERTS ‘Performance standard for organisations undertaking sampling and chemical testing of untreated sewage, treated sewage effluents and trade effluents’ was published in July 2008. The standard requires that where results are to be submitted to the Agency for regulatory purposes, laboratories must both fulfil the general requirements of ISO/IEC 17025, and meet specific method validation and performance requirements laid down in the performance standard. This course, organised and delivered in conjunction with UKAS, explains the method validation requirements of the new standard and covers the statistics required for the evaluation of validation data to meet the requirements of MCERTS.

What are the benefits?

This course will help you:

• meet the method performance requirements for MCERTS for effluent testing;
• understand the most important statistical concepts used in method validation;
• select the most appropriate statistics for evaluating validation data;
• carry out statistical significance tests;
• assess whether test methods meet the precision and bias requirements of MCERTS.

Content

The course will cover:

• The MCERTS performance requirements;
• Essential statistical parameters for MCERTS;
• Calculating degrees of freedom;
• Evaluating method bias;
• Evaluating method precision;
• Significance testing: t-tests and the F-test;
• Analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Who should attend?

This course is aimed at analysts who need to validate methods to meet the requirements of the new MCERTS standard for chemical testing of sewage and effluents. It will also be of interest to those involved with the validation of methods for the analysis of soil samples - the statistical techniques explained during the course are relevant to the implementation of the MCERTS standard for the chemical testing of soils.

Further information and bookings

Contact the LGC Training Centre for further information or to make a booking:

Lorraine Didinal
LGC Training Centre
LGC, Queens Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 0LY

Tel: 020 8943 7631
email: training@lgc.co.uk

Book on-line at www.lgc.co.uk