What About Blanks???

The mineral industry includes “blanks” in assay quality control programs.
These barren samples are used to monitor contamination that may occur during sample preparation (sample carry-over in crushing or pulverizing). But contamination can also be introduced by using poor quality laboratory reagents, solution carry-over for AAS, ICP or ICP-MS analyses and re-use of fire assay pots and other vessels.
Do your QC protocols protect you from reporting assays that are falsely elevated?