ISM is increasingly being used in the environmental field for sampling contaminants in soil. Proponents have found that the sampling density afforded by collecting many increments, together with the disciplined processing and subsampling of the combined increments, in most cases yields more consistent and reproducible results than those obtained by more traditional (i.e., discrete) sampling approaches.
In 2009, ITRC established a technical team to evaluate ISM for sampling soils at hazardous waste sites and potentially contaminated properties. The ISM Team convened national experts in fields such as toxicology, risk assessment, statistics, and soil sampling. This 2012 guidance analyzes ISM performance, identifies considerations for unique laboratory processes and procedures, evaluates the suitability of ISM to various contamination scenarios and contaminant categories, and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of ISM. It includes a January 2020 Clarification Statement.