A Quick Summary Bulletin #19
Analytical reports must be more than a certificate purchased at a stationary store. The report should be simple, complete, easy to understand, and provide answers to common questions posed by clients as well as staff members. It should not contain useless or misleading information.
General Philosophy
Reports should tell you in an understandable way how things are relative to how they should be. A report must tell you what you need to know and what you probably wanted to know. It should have enough information to survive an audit trail, but not include miscellaneous data that does not mean anything to the reader. (For example, some labs report the argon content in diver’s air and Fire Department air. Why? It serves no useful purpose and confuses the client.) The report is technical in nature, but should not contain chromatograms or IR scans unless explanations accompany the scans. For example, recently a dive store failed to pass Grade E requirements because of elevated hydrocarbons. We ran a GCMS scan and found the hydrocarbons to be gasoline in origin. In addition to the conclusion, we included our GCMS chromatogram with the peaks identified.
Our Philosophy
Although there is no requirement to reveal the flow rate and sample volume, we include it in our reports because it documents that the sample was taken properly: high flow and high volume per NFPA’s requirements. We also put a seal on our reports stating that we employ standards traceable to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). We use a gold colored seal to bring attention to this traceability.
Some labs list QA data. We perform QA checks (3 – 5 standards per analyte plus duplicates). However, we do not include them in the lab report because it only confuses the issue, and makes the report difficult to read. We can send you our QA information if desired, however, you should know that all QA reports have little true value – a lab can perform poorly and still have a QA document that is acceptable. (See our section on Bad Science.)
Reports, The Three Most Popular
Our reports are based on the formats of the three most common specifications. In the U.S., they are: CGA Grade E ( breathing air for Divers), CGA Grade D (breathing air for fire departments and non-diving applications) and US Navy Diver’s Air (used by all military commands). Incidently, if you don’t already know it, the CGA letter designation is not related to purity. This means that CGA Grade A air is not a tighter specification than CGA Grade E. In fact, CGA Grade A air has only one requirement: it must have 19.5 to 23.5 % oxygen.
Some of our reports are short (i.e., CGA Grade D), while others are 3 pages long (NAVSEA Table B-2 in PI #0558-839k). Sample reports are given in each Program Section. For example, a typical CGA Grade E report is given in the Sport Diving Section.