Introduction to Environmental Data Acquisition - Fundamentals of Environmental Sampling and Analysis - page 3

decision-making process.'' As scientific reliability must be established for all
environmental data, legal defensibility may not be needed in all cases such as the one
in most academic research projects. Legal defensibility is critical in many other
circumstances such as in most of the industrial and governmental settings.
Components of legally defensible data include, but are not limited to:
Custody or Control
Documentation
Traceability.
Custody or Control: To be defensible in court, sample integrity must be maintained
to remove any doubts of sample tampering/alteration. A chain-of-custody form
can be used to prove evidence purity. The chain-of-custody form is designed to
identify all persons who had possession of the sample for all periods of time, as it is
moved from the point of collection to the point of final analytical results. ''Control''
over the sample is established by the following situations: (1) It is placed in a
designated secure area. (2) It is in the field investigator's or the transferee's
actual possession. (3) It is in the field investigator's or the transferee's physical
possession and then he/she secures it to prevent tampering. (4) It is in the field
investigator's or the transferee's view, after being in his/her physical possession
(Berger et al., 1996).
Documentation: Documentation is something used to certify, prove, substanti-
ate, or support something else. In a civil proceeding, documentation is anything that
helps to establish the foundation, authenticity, or relevance leading to the truth of a
matter. It may become evidence itself. Photos, notes, reports, computer printouts,
and analyst records are all examples of documentation. The chain-of-custody form is
one such piece of very important type of document. Documentary evidence is the
written material that ''speaks for itself.''
Traceability: Traceability, otherwise known as a ''paper trail,'' is used to
describe the ability to exactly determine from the documentation that which reagents
and standards were used in the analysis and where they came from. Traceability is
particularly important with regard to the standards that are used to calibrate the
analytical instruments. The accuracy of the standards is a determining factor on
the accuracy of the sample results. Thus, each set of standards used in the lab should
be traceable to the specific certificate of analysis (Berger et al., 1996).
Similar to the components of scientifically defective data, legally weak data
may be a result of unintentional or deliberate efforts. In the case of misconduct, the
person involved will be subjected to the same punishment as those who commit
criminal acts, such as those frequently reported (Margasak, 2003). Misconducts in
environmental sampling and analysis can be a result of the following:
Outside labs oftentimes work for the people who hired them
Poor training of employees in nongovernmental or private labs
Ineffective ethics programs
Shrinking markets and efforts to cut costs.