Certifications importance

SECTION 3. certification important Read and sign after comptetlnfl lt form sections.)... 

Documentation prepared for the Chinese customs by importers includes an invoice, a sales contract, a bill of lading, a shipping list, an insurance policy, an inspection certificate and a customs declaration form. For the import items that require a licence or a quota certificate, importers must apply to the Ministry of Foreign Trade. The Letter of Credit is a standard payment method used by Chinese importers for international transactions. The Bank of China has branches in major countries and can issue letters of credit for Chinese importers. The China Import and Export Bank finances foreign trade and has adopted international ISO standards. 

Currently, the elaboration of methods for the objective control of the authenticity of important documents, such as passports, securities, licenses, certificates, identification cards, etc., is being intensively developed. 

The use of these techniques is an important element of industrial policy since they contribute to the creation of a business friendly regulatory environment allowing the combination of measures taken for internal organisational reasons and obligations of certification without lowering the level of safety to be achieved. Wlienever possible a choice between product control and quality assurance procedures is offered to manufacturers. 

Internal methods of quality assessment should always be viewed with some level of skepticism because of the potential for bias in their execution and interpretation. For this reason, external methods of quality assessment also play an important role in quality assurance programs. One external method of quality assessment is the certification of a laboratory by a sponsoring agency. Certification is based on the successful analysis of a set of proficiency standards prepared by the sponsoring agency. For example, laboratories involved in environmental analyses may be required to analyze standard samples prepared by the Environmental Protection... 

Conformance to ISO 9000 by U.S. companies was led by the chemical industry as a result of the importance of international trade to chemical companies. An ISO 9000 certification was once thought to be necessary for access to the European market (52). At the beginning of 1994, almost 20% of U.S. certifications went to chemical companies. The emphasis on registration continues at a fast pace, as certification is considered an important suppher selection criterion by U.S. chemical companies. 

In 1938 a new law, the Federal Food, Dmg, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (18), which instituted several new and important practices, was enacted. Fkst, it clearly stated that, henceforth, the use of any uncertified coal-tar color in any food, dmg, or cosmetic shipped in interstate commerce was stricdy forbidden. This restriction appHed regardless of the inherent toxicity of the colorant. In effect, the colorants that could be used were limited, certification became mandatory, and governmental control was extended to the coloring of dmgs and cosmetics. Next, it created three categories of coal-tar colors ... 

Miscellaneous Colorants. Other colorants not requiring certification have been defined in the Code of Federal Regulations. Most of these ate of only minor to moderate importance and have only limited usage. 

Inspection is also an important activity in the regulation of international trade through the certification of vehicles and containers used for transporting hazardous products and for providing foreign purchasers with evidence that manufactured goods comply with specification before they leave the country of origin. The essential characteristics of and requirements for an inspection authority are ... 

The certification of fuels Each refiner, blender, or importer of gasoline must ensure that per-gallon emissions levels of VOCs, NOv, CO, and toxic air pollutants do not exceed the gasoline sold in 1990. 

As with other graduated glassware, burettes are produced to both Class A and Class B specifications in accordance with the appropriate standard [BS 846 (1985) ISO 385 (1984)], and Class A burettes may be purchased with BST Certificates. All Class A and some Class B burettes have graduation marks which completely encircle the burette this is a very important feature for the avoidance of parallax errors in reading the burette. Typical values for the tolerances permitted for Class A burettes are ... 

Your children may be exposed to endosulfan if unquahfied people apply pesticides around your home. In some cases, the use of pesticides that have been banned for use in homes has turned homes into hazardous waste sites. Your state licenses each person qualified to apply pesticides using EPA standards and further certifies each person qualified to apply restricted use pesticides. Ask to see the license and certification of anyone who applies pesticides for you. Also ask for the brand name of the pesticide, a material safety data sheet (MSDS), the name of the product s active ingredient, and the EPA registration number. Ask whether EPA has designated the pesticide for restricted use and what the approved uses are. This information is important if you or your family have a reaction to the product. 

The most important document, accompanying a CRM is its certificate. ISO Guide 31 (1981) provides guidance for the establishment of certificates, labeling of CRMs, and certification reports. The certificate contains among other information the certified values and their respective uncertainties. As important as this information is the traceability statement, which defines to what references the CRM is traceable. Ideally, a CRM is traceable to a suitable (combination) of SI units. This is not always possible, so other stated references may appear here. Especially when certifying matrix reference materials, making the measurements traceable to SI does not imply that the CRM is traceable to SI as well. The steps necessary to transform the sample into a state that can be measured may have a serious impact on the traceability of the values, and thus on the traceability statement. 

Sim et al. 1987, 1988 Taylor 1993 Uriano and Gravatt 1977) a synopsis has appeared previously (Ihnat 1998). There are advantages and disadvantages to each certification approach. Usage is not necessarily clear-cut, and in many cases various combinations of these approaches have been used in certification. The most important consideration in any scheme is that systematic errors inherent in the methods... 

Independence of analysts and analyses in one organization is a fundamental question. It is important to have, even for the most reliable methods, more than one analyst/laboratory involved to avoid possible analyst/laboratory-specific biases. Certification by a single laboratory, without confirmation by another laboratory or method is risky. Measurement by a single definitive method is usually performed by two or more analysts working independently to minimize possible biases. Frequently, an accurately characterized back-up method is employed to corroborate the data. Some agencies feel that a certification campaign should not be based on a single measirrement procedure and therefore do not normally certify values on the basis of a definitive method applied in one laboratory. 

The enormous difference in certified values between methods and between analytes illustrates well how much care is needed in matrix/method matching. Further evidence of the importance of matrix matching is provided by an interlaboratory study on trace elements in soil reported by Maier et al. (1983) and the certification of a sewage sludge described by Maaskant et al. (1998). 

For example trace elements in milk powder are not consumed as milk, and moisture in transformer oil is not used in transformers, yet matrix reference materials based on milk are imported as food and are subject to health certification requirements and sometimes import quotas. Likewise a matrix based on oil is identified as fuel or lubricating oil and is both classified as a hazardous material and subject to mineral oil tax. These problems arise because RMs are frequently incorrectly classified by specific title of their matrix (as Reference Material of Trace Elements in Rice is classified as rice) and not as reference material which is the intended use. 

Health, Environmental, Quarantine and Other Regulations Many countries have strict regulations designed to protect the ecosystem and agrochemical business. For example any matrix material derived from pork, beef, sheep or horse tissue has to be accompanied with a Veterinary Certificate confirming that the matrix material is free of certain specified diseases before it can be imported into the EU. The Australian import restrictions are even tougher and require the importer to obtain prior permission to import plant and animal materials and products derived from biological materials. To get an import license it is necessary to complete an application, which includes information from the producer about the actual production process used to prepare the matrix ... 

The Promochem Group was the first international specialist supplier of certified reference materials (CRMs) and pharmaceutical reference substances used in environmental, medical and trace element analysis. Their experience provides a viewpoint that echoes, reinforces and expands on many of the trends discussed above (Jenks 1997). From the middle of the 1980 s, sales of CRM by Promochem increased between 10 % and 20 % annually, depending on the market sector and application. Since then National and International Metrology Institutes, such as the now privatized U.K. Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC), the European and U.S. Pharmacopoeias, the E.U. IRMM and others have recognized that efficient distribution of RMs, backed by available technical support, is as important as production and certification. Thus, they have moved to spread their influence outside their national origins. The Web and e-commerce will continue to grow as major facilitators of better information dissemination and supply of CRMs. 

For standard or proprietary polymer additive blends there is the need for analytical certification of the components. Blend technology has been developed for two- to six-component polymer additive blend systems, with certified analytical results [81]. Finally, there exist physical collections of reference additive samples, both public [82] and proprietary. The Dutch Food Inspection Service reference collection comprises 100 of the most important additives used in food contact plastics [83-85]. Reference compounds of a broad range of additives used in commercial plastics and rubber formulations are generally also available from the major additive manufacturers. These additive samples can be used as reference or calibration standards for chromatographic or spectroscopic analysis. DSM Plastics Reference Collection of Additives comprises over 1400 samples. 

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