Writing a book is always an audacious act, but writing a book such as this one on sampling
and sample pretreatment is even more than that: it is a real challenge. The book encompasses
the entire field of analytical chemistry and oozes a profound knowledge of the
concepts involved.
The role of the analytical chemist has changed profoundly over the past few decades.
The levels of analytes that can be determined routinely have decreased by several orders
of magnitude and the sample sizes that need to be handled have dropped significantly in
recent years. In parallel, the overall number of determinations that need to be performed
has grown enormously. Also, the advent of intelligent instruments and laboratory automation
has help analytical chemistry become a real information science. This significant,
steady progress in analytical science, however, has been brought about as much by gradual
advances in the preliminary steps of the analytical process (e.g. sample handling) as by
a number of leaps in technological progress.