Abstracts of papers and posters presented at the 2001 Pittsburgh Conference

s of papers and posters presented at the 2001 Pittsburgh Conference The following 80 abstracts form Part A of two issues of Journal of Automated Methods & Management in Chemistry devoted to abstracts of papers and posters presented this year at the 52nd Pittsburgh Conference, held from 4 to 9 March 2001 in New Orleans, LA, USA. The papers and posters covered a range of topics and techniques, each of which provided valuable information to the conferees and exhibitors alike. Unfortunately, not all of the speakers provided abstracts, so I have been limited to those that were included in the book of Abstracts. This presents a worrying trend, which, added to the disappointing attendance ® gures, should give the organizing committees food for thought at least. Pittcon is my favourite show and has done a great job for analytical chemistry as a whole. Perhaps people are tiring of New Orleans as a venue, or is it becoming little more than a trade show? Hopefully, it will revive itself when the next show is held from 17 to 22 March 2002, also in New Orleans. If you need further information about any of these abstracts please contact the authors. It is my intention to publish full papers corresponding to some of these abstracts in future issues of the journal. Peter B. Stockwell Editor Performance criteria and performance characteristics of Ž eld-screening test methods Kevin Ashley, Ruiguang Song and Paul C. Schlecht, US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, OH 45226-1998, USA Field-portable test methods may be quantitative, semiquantitative or qualitative, and screening methods are often used in the ® eld to determine if the concentration of a toxic substance exceeds regulatory or recommended standards or action levels. For on-site analysis, accurate quantitative tests for ® eld measurements may not be available depending on the analyte(s) or speci® c ® eld situation. Thus, in lieu of more de® nitive test methods, screening tests based on qualitative or semiquantitative methods are often used to make immediate decisions in the ® eld, e.g. for compliance or risk assessment. Also, quantitative methods may be used for screening purposes in many instances. To ensure the quality of these screening tests and the decisions made based upon their results, screening methods need to be evaluated with suæ cient data and should meet basic performance criteria before their being employed for decision-making purposes. Although quantitative, semiquantitative and qualitative methods demonstrate diå erent characteristics, it is desired that the performance criteria for all three method categories be consistent. If there is consistency, then one can have a sound basis for selecting the most appropriate test(s) for a given application. To unify the performance criteria for the diå erent types of methods, a performance function is used to characterise both qualitative and semiquantitative methods. In turn, this performance function is related to that for quantitative methods. False-negative rates, false-positive rates, sensitivity and speci® city are key characteristics of screening methods that can be determined from the pertinent performance curves. The performance characteristics of each method are related to the uncertainty region associated with each method, and the applicable uncertainty regions can be gleaned from the performance curves. Also, various options for using multiple test results to improve decisions based on test results are provided. Performance characteristic s and exposure assessment considerations of handheld and Ž eldportable analytical instruments in occupational