Scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) is the only affordable analytical technique that can discriminate both morphology and elemental composition of inorganic fibers. SEM-EDS is indeed required to quantify asbestos in confounding natural matrixes (e.g. ophiolites), but is also time-consuming, operator dependent, and strongly relies on the stochastic distribution of the fibers on the filter surface. The balance between analytical time/cost and the method sensibility allows only about 0.5% of the filter to be analyzed, strongly affecting the statistical significance of results. To improve sensitivity and precision and enhance productivity, an unattended quantitative measurement of the asbestos fibers by SEM-EDS is proposed. The method identifies the particle shape first and determines their chemical composition later, saving EDS analytical time. Our approach was tested on four asbestos standards and the relative error on replicated measurements was < 10%. The proposed unattended method quantifies asbestos in natural confounding matrix, also with a very low asbestos content.

带有能谱仪的扫描电子显微镜（SEM-EDS）是唯一可以区分无机纤维的形态和元素组成的可负担的分析技术。确实需要SEM-EDS来量化混杂自然基质（例如蛇绿岩）中的石棉，但它也很耗时，取决于操作人员，并且强烈依赖于纤维在过滤器表面上的随机分布。分析时间/成本与方法灵敏度之间的平衡仅允许分析约0.5％的过滤器，从而极大地影响了结果的统计意义。为了提高灵敏度和精度并提高生产率，提出了使用SEM-EDS对石棉纤维进行无人值守的定量测量。该方法首先识别颗粒形状，然后确定其化学成分，从而节省了EDS分析时间。我们的方法在四种石棉标准品上进行了测试，重复测量的相对误差<10％。所提出的无人值守方法对天然混杂基质中的石棉进行定量，石棉含量也非常低。