This work presents the results of an international interlaboratory comparison on ex situ passive sampling in sediments. The main objectives were to map the state of the science in passively sampling sediments, identify sources of variability, provide recommendations and practical guidance for standardized passive sampling, and advance the use of passive sampling in regulatory decision making by increasing confidence in the use of the technique. The study was performed by a consortium of 11 laboratories and included experiments with 14 passive sampling formats on 3 sediments for 25 target chemicals (PAHs and PCBs). The resulting overall interlaboratory variability was large (a factor of ∼10), but standardization of methods halved this variability. The remaining variability was primarily due to factors not related to passive sampling itself, i.e., sediment heterogeneity and analytical chemistry. Excluding the latter source of variability, by performing all analyses in one laboratory, showed that passive sampling results can have a high precision and a very low intermethod variability (

Atlantic Ecology Division Office of Research and Development U S Environmental Protection Agency Narragansett Rhode Island 02882 United States

Center for Fisheries Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences and Department of Zoology Southern Illinois University Carbondale Illinois 62901 United States

Civil Environmental and Construction Engineering Texas Tech University Box 41023 Lubbock Texas 79409 1023 United States

Deltares P O Box 85467 3508 AL Utrecht The Netherlands

Department of Chemical Biochemical and Environmental Engineering University of Maryland Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore Maryland 21250 United States

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Northeastern University 360 Huntington Avenue Boston Massachusetts 02115 United States

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seoul National University 1 Gwanak ro Gwanak gu Seoul 08826 Republic of Korea

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Stanford University 473 Via Ortega Stanford California 94305 United States

Department of Environmental Sciences Faculty of Science Alexandria University 21511 Moharam Bek Alexandria Egypt

ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences Incorporated 1545 US 22 East Annandale New Jersey 08822 United States

Graduate School of Oceanography University of Rhode Island South Ferry Road URI Bay Campus Narragansett Rhode Island 02882 United States

Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences Utrecht University ; Yalelaan 104 3584 CM Utrecht The Netherlands

Masaryk University Faculty of Science Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment Kamenice 753 5 62500 Brno Czech Republic

Norwegian Geotechnical Institute Environmental Technology Sognsveien 72 0806 Oslo Norway

RM Parsons Laboratory Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge Massachusetts 02139 United States

Southern California Coastal Water Research Project Authority 3535 Harbor Boulevard Suite 110 Costa Mesa California 92626 United States

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