Editorial: Composite sampling

Abstract

The high costs of laboratory analytical procedures frequently strain environmental and public health budgets. Whether soil, water or biological tissue is being analysed, the cost of testing for chemical and pathogenic contaminants can be quite prohibitive. Composite sampling can substantially reduce analytical costs because the number of required analyses is reduced by compositing several samples into one and analysing the composited sample. By appropriate selection of the composite sample size and retesting of select individual samples, composite sampling may reveal the same information as would otherwise require many more analyses. Many of the limitations of composite sampling have been overcome by recent research, thus bringing out more widespread potential for using composite sampling to reduce costs of environmental and public health assessments while maintaining and often increasing the precision of sample-based inference.