How "clean" is the cleaning profession?

Consumer products are potentially significant sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are precursors to the formation of ozone in photochemical smog. To address the problem of ozone formation in ambient air, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been involved in the development of test methods for measuring the VOC content of consumer products. This paper describes results of an interlaboratory study to estimate the repeatability (precision of analyses performed by a single laboratory) and reproducibility (precision of analyses performed by different laboratories) of the consumer products' VOC measurement method based on EPA Method 24 (for VOCs in surface coatings). The mean method repeatability was 2.7 wt% VOC, and the mean method reproducibility was 4.8 wt% VOC. Method repeatability ranged from 0.2 to 4.4 wt% VOC, and reproducibility ranged from 0.6 to 11.9 weight percent VOC. The precision of the VOC method for consumer products is similar to the precision of EPA Method 24 for surface coatings.

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