Primary Quality Assurance Organization
A Primary Quality Assurance Organization (PQAO) is a monitoring organization or a coordinated aggregation of such organizations that is responsible for a set of air monitoring stations that monitor the same pollutants and for which data precision and accuracy assessments can logically be pooled. Each criteria pollutant sampler/monitor at a monitoring station in the State and Local Air Monitoring Station Network must be associated with a single PQAO. Measurement precision and accuracy among all air monitoring stations in a PQAO is expected to be reasonably homogeneous based on five common operation, oversight and support factors.
To address the five common factors and ensure compliance with State and Federal air monitoring requirements, CARB collaborates with each monitoring organization in its PQAO to define respective Roles and Responsibilities with regard to the operation of the State's ambient air monitoring network.