Objectives of Standard Operating Procedures and General Principles

Objectives

The overall objective of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is to provide a harmonized organizational framework for the collection of comparable monitoring data on the presence of the POPs (or other hazardous substance). Comparable data is needed in order to identify trends as well as to provide information for integrated risk assessments.

General principles

Standard operating procedures should be guided by a number of underlying principles:

• Be practical, and easy to implement in developing countries (i.e., are sustainable);
• Improve the ability of countries to produce comparable data;
• Strive for simplicity and clarity of sampling program design, and establish clear expectations for analytical performance and QA/QC;
• Provide a consistent framework for future sample collections.

Process Overview

The diagram below outlines the entire process surrounding a  field sampling mission.