LIKE MOST IDEAS THAT BECOME widely disseminated, the original meaning of “good laboratory practices” has been somewhat altered. Today most people associate the phrase with “safe laboratory practices,” which carries only part of the original meaning. Certainly, good laboratory technique is safe, but it is also effective in its intended purpose. So we will return to that total concept with a miscellany of suggestions that pertain to metals analysis. Like so much that has gone before in this volume, we can only scrape at the surface of this subject, hopefully unearthing some nuggets that will prove useful.