Quality Assurance Guidance Document 2.12 Monitoring PM2.5 in Ambient Air Using Designated Reference or Class I Equivalent Methods

This document also provides recommended quality assurance (QA) procedures and guidance to help monitoring agencies reliably achieve the data quality objectives (DQOs) established for PM2.5 monitoring. The goal for acceptable measurement uncertainty has been defined as 10 percent coefficient of variation (CV) for total precision and ±10 percent for total bias (Papp et al., 1998). The information provided here, together with instruction manuals and technical bulletins provided by the manufacturer of the selected PM2.5 sampler, should be used by each monitoring organization to develop its own agency-specific quality assurance project plan (QAPP) and standard operating procedures (SOP) to govern its individual PM2.5 monitoring activity.