# Remove blank samples **URL:** \ **Category:** User Support\ **Created:** [April 3, 2019, 3:42pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/remove-blank-samples/9119 "2019-04-03T15:42:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 11
**Author:** ![lca123](https://forum.qiime2.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/47e85d/32.png) [@lca123](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/lca123)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2019, 1:42pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/remove-blank-samples/9119/11 "2019-04-05T13:42:36Z")
Hi ihl2016, As Justine mentioned, contamination depends on how your samples are being processed. As an illustration, if people deal with different samples/matrices in the same place or in the same laminar flow cabinet, cross-room contamination, well contamination during extraction/library prep. Last week I've got something close to what your seeing. > [@Got reads from samples that were NOT in the flowcell](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/got-reads-from-samples-that-were-not-in-the-flowcell/9100/2): > > Hi @lca123, This is the scary sort of thing that happens all the time whether we are looking or not. Now you've just had the opportunity to experience these errors first-hand! An additional possibility is sequence error in the barcodes causing one barcode to be misread as another. You have a few choices: ignore and move on. It is unlikely that you can really thoroughly remove these errors from your real data, but the read counts are so low that these inherent errors likely will have no imp… My case we didn't run some samples but either didn't exluded them from the SampleSheet. Turns out they have got reads and I could assign taxonomy for them. But I believe it was nothing more than noise. I believe the number of reads from your blank samples is low and may be nothing, but if your guessing that a likely contamination could be around, give it a try in what Nicholas suggested me in that thread. Cheers Leo --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/remove-blank-samples/9119)._