by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

“ These methods are intended to promote accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity in industrial hygiene analyses. There will be situations where users of the NIOSH methods will need to modify them (e.g., to accommodate interfering compounds from the workplace, to take advantage of special capabilities of the laboratory, to make possible the analysis of a single sample for several contaminants) . When method modifications are made, quality control data showing the reliability of the modified method should be obtained. ”

“ Evaluation: Full Fully evaluated methods are methods that have been tested and have met all the factors of the NIOSH evaluation protocol as presented in Chapter E. Evaluation: Partial Partially evaluated methods are methods that have been subjected to some of the evaluation experiments but have not received a full evaluation (i.e., Short-term Method Development) . These may also include methods that were fully tested but did not meet one or two of the evaluation criteria, e.g., some of the earlier-developed methods that do not meet the current ±25% accuracy criterion. ”