CCQM-K25 Key Comparison – Determination of PCB Congeners in.pdfVIP

CCQM-K25: Key Comparison – Determination of PCB Congeners in Sediment Final Report 12 Dec 2003 Michele Schantz and Stephen Wise Analytical Chemistry Division Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory National Institute of Standards and Technology U.S. Department of Commerce Gaithersburg, MD 20899 Graeme Gardner, Cathie Fraser, and James McLaren Chemical Metrology Group Institute for National Measurement Standards National Research Council of Canada Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1A 0R9 Petra Lehnik-Habrink Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing Berlin, Germany Esther Castro Galván Centro Nacional de Metrologia Querértaro, Mexico Heinz Schimmel Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements Geel, Belgium Dal-Ho Kim and Gwi Suk Heo Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science Dejeon, South Korea David Carter Laboratory of the Government Chemist Teddington, UK Peter Taylor National Analytical Reference Laboratory Pymble, Australia Takashi Yarita National Metrology Institute of Japan Tsukuba, Japan CCQM-K25 Page 1 of 24 INTRODUCTION Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) consist of 209 possible congeners depending on the substitution of the chlorine atoms around the biphenyl molecule. PCBs have been widely used as industrial fluids, flame retardants, diluents, hydraulic fluids, and dielectric fluids for capacitors and transformers. As a class of compounds, they are environmentally stable and tend to bioaccumulate. Of the 209 possible congeners, approximately 150 congeners have been reported in the environment. Congener specific PCB methods, which are typically based on gas chromatography