Glossary
Environmental Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential environmental technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key environmental technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in environmental technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Chain of custody
- Documentation tracking who handled a sample and when, preserving its legal integrity.
- Composite sample
- Multiple samples combined over time or location.
- Dissolved oxygen (DO)
- Oxygen in water, essential for aquatic life.
- Field blank
- A sample of clean water exposed to field conditions to detect contamination.
- Grab sample
- A single sample collected at one time and place.
- Holding time
- The maximum time allowed between sample collection and analysis.
- Low-flow purging
- Removing well water slowly to collect representative groundwater samples.
- NPDES permit
- A Clean Water Act permit regulating discharges to surface waters.
- pH
- A measure of acidity or alkalinity from 0 to 14.
- Phase I ESA
- Environmental site assessment reviewing a property’s history for contamination risks.
- PID
- Photoionization detector: measures volatile organic compounds in air.
- QA/QC
- Quality assurance and quality control: procedures ensuring reliable data.
- SWPPP
- Stormwater pollution prevention plan required for many construction sites.
- Turbidity
- Cloudiness of water, measured in NTU.
- VOCs
- Volatile organic compounds: chemicals that evaporate easily.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Environmental Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Environmental Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.