ENVIRONMENTAL LABORATORY ADVISORY BOARD MEETING Monthly Teleconference: 202-991-0477/7939251# April 18, 2018; 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST MEETING SUMMARY The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Environmental Laboratory Advisory Board (ELAB or Board) teleconference meeting was held on April 18, 2018. The agenda for this meeting is provided as Attachment A, a list of meeting participants is provided as Attachment B, and action items are included as Attachment C The official certification of the minutes by the Chair or Vice-Chair and the Designated Federal Officer is included as Attachment D. ROLL CALL/ INTRODUCTION Dr. Mike Delaney, Chair of ELAB, welcomed the members and guests to the meeting. He took roll of the members present and attending by teleconference. Dr. Tom O'Farrell confirmed the participation list. APPROVAL OF THE PRIOR MINUTES Dr. Delaney asked whether any members had comments about the Board's March 2018 minutes. Dr. Mahesh Pujari moved to approve the minutes, and Dr. Dallas Wait seconded the motion. The ELAB Board unanimously approved the March 2018 minutes. Mr. Brad Meadows, Mr. Jeff Loewe and Ms. Sharon Mertens abstained from voting due to their absence in the previous meeting. The Board unanimously approved the March minutes. OPENING REMARKS AND UPDATES FROM THE DFO Dr. O'Farrell, the Designated Federal Officer for ELAB, thanked everyone for attending the meeting. He mentioned that everyone has been asking about the FR Notice for ELAB recruitment this year. It has not been published yet and is with the ORD Assistant Administrator for review. Dr. O'Farrell will let ELAB know when it has been published, and he thanked ELAB for the suggested nominations and encourages ELAB to recommend more. He reminded Board members to address letters and reports to the EPA Science Advisor, Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta. Dr. O'Farrell recently gave Dr. Delaney and Dr. Brian Buckley Dr, Orme-Zavaleta's official address for ELAB to use. Please send letters to Dr. O'Farrell and he will make sure the appropriate people receive it. The Cyanide letter was addressed to someone else and that will not be the policy going forward. ELAB should use Jennifer's name for all EPA documents. Dr. O'Farrell will work with ELAB members to ensure that letters get to the best person for engagement on the topic. ------- SPECIAL GUEST: ADRIAN HANLEY ON THE PCB CONGENER METHOD Mr. Adrian Hanley explained that there has been no new info on thistopicfor a while. They recently completed single lab validation of thecongener method and until they receive this year's budget they are at a bit of a pause due to significant expenditures. The PCB congener method has three goals in mind. 1) It is a method that detects individual congeners, and not just Aroclor peak patterns. 2) Make it be reasonably sensitive but not so sensitive that it picks up 'ambient' PCB congener contamination. Example would be method 1668, which is a high resolution, GC/MS, PCB Congener method that picks up trace PCB congeners down to the ppq (parts-per-quadrillion) level. 3) That this is a method that a normal, mid-size, full-service environmental lab would be able to run without special equipment requirements. EPA will be doing outreach in a few months to the laboratory communities and contract labs in the next 4 or 5 months. They will have informational meetings within the laboratory community and Mr. Hanley will let ELAB know about these. This method is not nearly as sensitive as 1668 but has some similarities. It is a congener method with a run time of about 40 minutes and both check for PCB contamination. Office of Water picked 29 Carbon-13 standards for isotope-dilution standards based off the 1st and last elution for each homolog to be confident that it was set to the right ions during the right retention time. The second reason they picked these isotope-dilution standards was because they are based off the most commonly seen PCB congeners in the environment. Several labs volunteered data and EPA picked the ones most likely to show up. Based on 1668 waste water samples, a fish survey study, and a national sewage sludge study, they picked the ones most likely to show up in a wastewater sample. Once the draft method gets reviewed, the environmental community will be able to see it. And once multi-lab validation happens, we will start publicly posting this method. Based on the fact that some permits allow low PCB limits, Mr. Mike Flournoy asked Mr. Hanley if this was going to be a screening method? No, it will give you results for every congener included in the method. Mr. Elan Rieser asked how the sample prep compared to other mass spec methods. Mr. Hanley explained that they looked at wastewater, basic extraction, and two solid phase extractions and all three performed similarly. ELAB thanked Mr. Hanley for his time and looks forward to the multi-lab study going out. TASK GROUP UPDATES ON CURRENT TOPICS The Board possesses broad expertise and works on a variety of topics identified by ELAB members, the Agency or the environmental laboratory community. The Board addresses these topics through temporary Task Groups. The Task Group leaders or their representatives provided a report of current topics/activities. ------- User-Generated Library Acceptance Criteria Dr. O'Farrell sent the draft letter regarding tuning criteria to some of his colleagues to review in order to determine who in EPA would be best to receive and consider it. Dr. Buckley explained that ELAB needs to do serious modification and add more detail to the letter based on EPAs comments. EPA requests noting the specific methods, offices at EPA that these recommendations would apply to, which person, office or region requested ELAB to conduct this review, provide a clearer proposal for EPA, how ELAB can help achieve the result, and how it will benefit the EPA and the laboratory community. The letter currently does not begin to go into these topics, so the letter will have to be revised. The subcommittee will have to go back and evaluate EPA comments and find examples and revise the current document. Dr. O'Farrell clarified that these are suggestions with the aim of submitting a clear proposal that would be received by the most relevant office. At ELAB, we should make sure our letters and reports get traction at EPA. Dr. Leibovitz commented that these ideas are submitted by face-to-face requests at meetings or guest speakers, or by email. These are not just ideas that ELAB finds important, they are issues that people and commercial laboratory groups want us to look into. Dr. Buckley said that this issue arose at the August 2016 face to face ELAB meeting by Mr. Larry Penfold of TestAmerica asking ELAB to look into it. Dr. Richard Burrows, suggested there might be two things about this issue that we need to separate. He said Mr. Penfold's original request was to suggest using a NIST spectra library as a reference library rather than a user generated library. It appears that ELAB is actually talking about using libraries for other types of instrumentation (ion trap, time of flight) and that this is different and complicated. He suggested that ELAB should not examine them together. Dr. Leibovitz clarified that the detuning suggestion applies to new analytical platforms that have better performance. Dr. Buckley does not want to revisit the August meeting and talk about what happens if the data isn't validated. Dr. O'Farrell clarified that enough detail should be added to the letter so that the person at EPA receiving it has a good understanding of it, not a thorough proposal at this point. This is an initial foray and there will be additional communication that might provide more detail later. Dr. Buckley was asked to find out who was originally on the task group. Dr. Delaney said he would be interested in joining the task group. Cyanide Methodology ELAB received a response letter from the Office of Water Assistant Adminitrator that says he agrees with the ELAB suggestions and will write them into revised guidance. ELAB will send a thank you letter to the Assistant Administrator. Dr. Delaney has asked the Board to approve sending the letter with minor edits, Dr. Leibovitz seconded the motion. The Board approved the motion. ------- Selected Ion Monitoring (SIM) Dr. Delaney went through comments that EPA sent us on the proposed minimum criteria document and then sent to the task group for their review. He received a couple edits from outside experts but has not seen any edits from the task group. He will give the task group more time to complete the review and hopes to get that letter back the end of next month. Mr. Meadows noted that last version of the document is dated 3/29. Travis Bartholomew for the Texas Air Program made a lot of detailed comments about things in the document, especially removing things that were not specific to SIM. Addressing Emerging Contaminants In the absence of Ms. Sharon Mertens, no update was provided. Acrolein and Acrylonitrile Dr. Mahesh Pujari talked about how people in Los Angeles County did a study on stabilizing samples at pH 2 and 4. Dr. Pujari will send Dr. O'Farrell a letter to ask Mr. Hanley how much data, or what experimental design, would be needed to revise the preservation requirements for acrolein and acrylonitrile from pH 4-5 to pH = 2. The good part about the data is that it was done in sample matrix in their effluent sample matrix plant. We will wait and see what Mr. Hanley says once he receives more information about the topic. Drinking Water Program Adoption of Recent Approved Methods Ms. Debra Waller is drafting a letter. The draft letter will be made available for next month's meeting. Inactive Topics 1. Whole Effluent Toxicity PT Standards Dr. Leibovitz said that there were no updates from TNI, or EPA. TNI has a PT committee and a whole effluent toxicity committee and they put their minutes on their website. He has not received minutes from the TNI committee meetings or information about other meetings. 2. Drinking Water Certification Officer's Training Course In the absence of Ms. Sharon Mertens, no update was provided. 3. In-Line/On-Line Monitoring No current updates on the topic. Mr. Lemuel Walker has not responded to Dr. O'Farrell's emails so he will follow-up with a phone call. ------- 4. Interagency Data Quality Task Force/Data Quality Objective Dr. Leibovitz said a couple years back when Dr Wait was ELAB chair, ELAB talked about involving environmental testing laboratories early in the process of developing quality assurance plans. Drs. Leibovitz and Wait were supposed to meet with Mr. Jordan Adelson (DOD) and the Interagency Data Quality Workforce to discuss the advantages of including laboratories in the QAPP process. Dr. O'Farrell will check with Mr. Adelson and see if he still wants to have this meeting. NEW TOPICS/ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION There was prior discussion about ELAB getting involved with collecting performance data from private companies. Dr. O'Farrell checked with EPA counsel and they suggested that it would be inadvisable for ELAB to collect data and submit data to EPA that could have confidential business information in it. Dr. Delaney requested more information on the EPA counsel's determination. ELAB Board is looking to the Federal Register Notice for recruitment. WRAP-UP/SUMMARY OF ACTION ITEMS Dr. O'Farrell reviewed the action items identified during the meeting, which are included in attachment C. The next ELAB meeting is scheduled for the 16th of May. CLOSING REMARKS/ADJOURNMENT Dr. Wait moved to adjourn the meeting and motion seconded by Mr. Meadows. The Board unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting. Dr. O'Farrell thanked everyone for participating and noted that the next ELAB meeting is on May 16th. ------- Attachment A ENVIRONMENTAL LABPORATORY ADVISORY BOARD (ELAB) Face-to-Face Meeting/Teleconference: 202-991-0477 / 793-9251# time 4/18/2018 | 1:00-3:00PM EST | Meeting called by Mike Delaney Item Owner Call Meeting to Order Delaney Introduction of Board Members/Roll Call Board Approval of Minutes for Previous Meeting(s) Delaney Opening Remarks and Updates from DFO O'Farrell PCB Congener Method Update Hanley Updates on Current Topics Board A. Cyanide Methodology — Delaney B. Selecting Ion Monitoring — Delaney C. User-generated Library Acceptance Criteria — Buckley D. Addressing Emerging Contaminants — Mertens E. Acrolein and Acrylonitrile Preservation and pH —- Pujari F. Drinking Water Program Adoption of Recent Approved Methods — Waller Inactive Topics awaiting feedback/input Board A. Whole Effluent Toxicity proficiency study standards — Leibovitz B. Drinking Water Certification Officer's Training Course — Mertens C. In-Line/On-Line Monitoring —- Flournoy D. Interagency Data Quality Task Force/Data Quality Objective Process —- Leibovitz New Topics/Issues for Consideration Delaney Wrap-Up/Summary of Action Items O'FarrelS/Cawiezell/Delaney CSosing Remarks/Adjournment O'Farrell/Delaney ------- Attachment B PARTICIPANTS LIST Board Members Attendance Name (Y/N) Affiliation Y Dr. Michael (Mike) Delaney (Chair) Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) Rcpro>»jnliiili: MWRA Y Mr. Michael Hoiimov (Vice- Chair) Euro fins Environment Testing USA Representing: American Council of Independent Laboratories Y Dr. Thomas O'Farrell (DFO) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Representing: EPA Y Dr. Kim Anderson Oregon State University Representing: Academia—Oregon State Universih Y Dr. Brian Buckley Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences institute Representing: Academia and Laboratory -Rutgers Y Ms. Patricia (Patty) Carvajal San Antonio River Authority Representing: Watershed/Restoration N Dr. Deyuan (Kitty) Kong Chevron Energy Technology Company Representing: Chevron Y Mr. Jeff I.oevve NiSource. Inc. Representing: Industry— NiSource. Inc. Y Dr. Henry Leibovitz Rhode Island State Health Laboratories Representing: Association of Public Health Laboratories Y Mr. Brad Meadows Babcock Laboratories. Inc. Representing: Commercial Laboratory— Babcock Laboratories. Inc. N Ms. Sharon Mertens Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Representing: The NELAC Institute Y Dr. Mahesh Pujari City of Los Angeles Representing: National Association of Clean Water Ajjencio* Y Mr. F.Ian Rieser Con Edison - Representing: Utility ------- Water Act Group Y Dr. A. Dallas Wait Gradient Representing: Consumer Products Industry Y Ms. Debra (Deb) Waller New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Representing: State Government— MJDEP PARTICIPANTS LIST (CONT) Contractors ami Guests Attendance (Y/N) Name Affiliation N Mr. Thomas Cawie/ell (Contractor) Oak Ridge Associated Universities at EV ' Y Richard Burrows Test America Y Pennv Shamblin Y Adrian Han ley Office of Water ------- Attachment C Action Items 1. Mike Delaney - Will finalize and send cyanide letter approved by the Board. 2. Tom O'Farrell - Follow up with Lemuel Walker with any in-line/on-line monitoring developments. 3. Henry Leibovitz - Will send Tom O'Farrell Lara Phelps's response letter in response to the Board's recommendations on an Interagency Data Quality Task Force. Lara outlined next steps to take. Tom O'Farrell will have a discussion with Lara Phelps about the topic. 4. Henry Leibovitz - Will clarify with Richard Burrows the modifications that might be needed in the new versions of the 600-series methods. 5. Tom O'Farrell - Let ELAB know when the 2016 Federal Register notice for recruiting members comes out 6. Mahesh Pujari - Send Tom O'Farrell a letter to ask Adrian Handley how much data, or what experimental design, would be needed to revise the preservation requirements for acrolein and acrylonitrile from pH 4-5 to pH = 2. 7. ELAB Members - Mass spec library task group will continue to work on a letter for review by the Board. 8. ELAB Members - The SIM task group will continue to work revise the minimum criteria document for review by the Board. ------- Attachment D I hereby certify that this is the final version of the minutes for the Environmental Laboratory Advisory Board Meeting held on April 18, 2018. cs Recovers SiQnature Dr. Michael Pelartey Dr. Thomas O Fan-eli Chair Designated Federal Officer Signed by: Delaney, Mike (9 ------- |