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Who the table binds

On this page11
A student with a creek is not regulated. The chemistry does not care.

What part 136 is

"Guidelines Establishing Test Procedures for the Analysis of Pollutants", under the Clean Water Act. It sets the approved methods for the numbers a permit holder reports.

So it binds compliance work

A discharge permit, a regulated outfall, a laboratory reporting to a regulator. Those samples have to be collected in the container the table names, preserved the way it says, and analyzed inside the holding time.

And it does not bind a landowner or a class

Somebody sampling their own well, a student doing a project, a watershed group building a picture. None of that is permit reporting and the table is not a requirement for it.

Which is not a reason to ignore it

The table exists because a container changes a sample. A phenol sample in a polymer bottle reads low whether or not anybody is regulated, and a wrong number is a wrong number.

So this property uses it as physics

The best available published statement of what a container does to a water sample, which is exactly what a packaging catalog should be reading.

It is a water table

Table II covers water parameters: bacterial, toxicity, inorganic, organic, protozoan. One of the five leaves in this group is water.

Soil is elsewhere

Soil and waste methods live under SW-846 with their own container and holding time guidance. This property does not borrow the water numbers for soil, because they are not the same numbers.

And the botanical leaves have no table at all

Leaf, pollen and seed have no comparable federal container table. What they have is a set of physical requirements, and those pages say so rather than inventing an authority.

The one thing that is universal

A sample is a measurement, and a container that adds to it or takes from it has broken the measurement before the laboratory opens the lid.

Read the table section next

Five container codes, one of which our largest material group does not belong to. That is the finding this property exists to deliver.

References

40 CFR part 136 is "Guidelines Establishing Test Procedures for the Analysis of Pollutants" under the Clean Water Act. It governs compliance monitoring: permit reporting and regulated discharges. It does not bind a student, a gardener or a landowner sampling their own water, and this property uses it outside that scope as the best available statement of what a container does to a sample rather than as a requirement.
40 CFR 136.3, Table II, "Required Containers, Preservation Techniques, and Holding Times", footnote 1: "'P' is for polyethylene; 'FP' is fluoropolymer (polytetrafluoroethylene [PTFE]; Teflon(R)), or other fluoropolymer, unless stated otherwise in this Table II; 'G' is glass; 'PA' is any plastic that is made of a sterilizable material (polypropylene or other autoclavable plastic); 'LDPE' is low density polyethylene." Footnote 2: "Except where noted in this Table II and the method for the parameter, preserve each grab sample within 15 minutes of collection." ecfr.gov
Written from 40 CFR 136.3 Table II and from the catalog as it stood on 19 October 2026. Part 136 governs Clean Water Act compliance monitoring; it is used here for everything else as the best available statement of what a container does to a water sample, not as a rule that binds a student with a creek. Nothing on this shelf is sold precleaned or certified for regulated sampling, and no preservation chemistry is given, because that belongs to the laboratory running the analysis.