The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control serves the people as the authority, guardian, and advocate in all matters related to public health. The Department's definition of public health includes maintaining and promoting the full scope of environmental protection as well as personal health services that affect everyone's well being. The mission of the Agency is to promote and protect the health of the public and the environment.
To ensure quality data is available to make sound decisions regarding environmental matters, the State Quality Assurance Management Office was created. This office has been delegated the authority and responsibility for the Quality Assurance Program. Known as the Quality System, the QA Program encompasses a variety of measures to assure that environmental data collected are of appropriate type and quality for their intended use and that data involving all environmental efforts-pollution abatement, cleanup, public health protection, and environmental technology-successfully perform their intended role. The two governing components of the QA Program are the QA Policy and the Quality Management Plan (QMP) (pdf).
S.C. DHEC QA Policy
It is the quality assurance policy of this Agency that there be sufficient QA activities conducted to demonstrate that all environmental data generated, processed, or used will be scientifically valid, legally defensible, and of known and acceptable precision and accuracy. It is also the Agency policy that documented precision and accuracy information be available upon request for all reported data. Data shall be complete, representative, and comparable. The quality of all data generated by and for SCDHEC shall meet or exceed all Agency and EPA program requirements.
S.C. DHEC Quality System
SCDHEC's Quality System is the means by which the Agency implements the quality management process. The Quality System encompasses a variety of technical and administrative elements which are contained in the QAMP, such as:
- Organizational structure
- Policies and procedures
- Responsibilities
- Authorities
- Required documents
- Guidance documents
- Assessments
- Training
Requirements for the Quality System can be found in Guidance for Developing Quality Systems for Environmental Programs (G-1).
For additional information, contact: (803) 896-0862