International standards for laboratories

The most general laboratory accreditation standard is ISO 17025. This standard was published in December 1999 and is set to become the first truly international standard for laboratory accreditation. In this respect it replaces the UK s NAMAS MlO/Mll (National Accreditation of Measurement and Sampling) standard. In the UK the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) acts as the accrediting body for the NAMAS standard and will continue to do so for ISO 17025 when the NAMAS standard is superseded. 

World Anti-Doping Agency. International Standard for Laboratories. Version 2 Eebruary 20, 2003. Loadable PDF File on www.wada-ama.org. 

The detection and identification of prohibited compounds and methods of doping has been regulated for sports drug testing laboratories particularly by guidelines established by the IOC and, since 2001, the WADA/ Respective technical documents were created that outlined minimum required performance limits as well as international standards for laboratories (ISL), which accredited doping control laboratories must follow as evaluated in one or more annually conducted proficiency test programs. 

World Anti-Doping Agency (2009) The World Anti-Doping Code— International Standard for Laboratories. Available at http7/www. wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/International Standard for Laboratories v6 0 January 2009.pdf. Accessed 11-24-2008. 

Standards for food-grade chemicals in the United States are set by the Committee on Eood Chemicals Codex of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) which pubHshes them in the Food Chemicals Codex (ECC) (6) (see also Eood additives). Standards for laboratory reagents are set by the American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Analytical Reagents and are pubHshed in Feagent Chemicals—A.CS Specifications (7). Standards for electronic-grade chemicals, which have extremely low limits for trace ions, are pubHshed aimually in The Book of SEMI Standards (BOSS) by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) (8). 

The procedures and requirements for rhe type and commissioning tests are covered in narional and international standards—for example, for laboratory fume cupboards, welding fumes, and kirchen hoods. 

The method measures cortisone (urinary free cortisone, UFE), cortisol (urinary free cortisol, UFF), 6/1-hydroxycortisol, and 18-OHF using deuterated internal standards [62]. Commercial tetradeuterocortisol was used as an internal standard for cortisol, and the remaining dideutero homologs prepared in the laboratory by deuteration of A1 analogues. UFF and UFE are considered better indicators of hormone availability and hypersecretion than the F and E (free plus conjugated) quantified in the comprehensive profile. Typically the values of total F and E are about three times that of... 

The absolute amount of product resulting from solid-phase synthesis can often be readily determined by 1H NMR with an internal standard or, less efficiently, by purification of the product followed by weighing and full characterization. Volatile samples can be cleaved with a calibrated mixture of hexamethyldisiloxane/TFA/CDCl3, from which 1H NMR spectra can be recorded directly [16]. In our laboratory, we use DMSO-dg as solvent and DMSO-internal standard for yield determination by 1H NMR. The weight of crude products obtained from solid-phase synthesis is generally unsuitable for estimating the true yield, because these products are often contaminated with significant amounts of salts, which lead to overestimation of the yield. 

After a sample sequence has been analyzed, the analyst evaluates a computer printout with the raw analytical data and the computer-calculated analytical results. The analyst verifies that the QC acceptance criteria for daily calibration verifications, the surrogate and internal standards, and laboratory QC samples have been met. This review enables the analyst to determine whether reanalysis of samples will be required. Sample dilutions may be also needed if analyte concentrations in samples exceed the instrument calibration range. 

In 1968, the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards was established, and recently changed its name to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) (http // www.nccls.org). The CLSI is a nonprofit organization that sponsors educational programs in order to promote national and international standards for clinical laboratories. This is a noteworthy task, especially since following these specifications is not mandatory and no enforcement agency exists to ensure each laboratory follows the CLSI guidelines. As part of its educational programs, the CLSI publishes consensus documents on laboratory... 

Each laboratory received calibration solutions prepared gravimetrically with OCRs of certified purity [26] and was requested to check its own calibrant with this solution or to use it for calibration. The choice of internal standards for extraction and GC was left to each participant these were e.g. aldrin, -HCH, isodrin, CB 88, CB 118, DCBE-C7 and CB 207 [26]. 

The techniques used by the participating laboratories (see section 8.1.4) are summarised in Table 8.2. Pretreatment techniques included dilution, addition of HF (for Al complexa-tion), irradiation with thermal neutrons (for NAA), addition of internal standards (for ICPMS), addition of buffer (for titration) etc. 

Each laboratory used its own procedures for the sample preparation, clean-up, method of injection, choice of carrier gas, capillary columns and other chromatographic conditions. Each participant received two calibrant solutions prepared independently and gravimetrically with PCDD and PCDF of verified purity and identify [20] in addition, the participants received six - C labelled isomers in solution to be used as internal standards for determining the response factors and the recovery efficiency of the methods, as well as for calibration purposes [19],... 

As mentioned in the Section 1, physico-chemical methodology for quantitative analysis of plant hormone focuses primarily on GC-SIM, although HPLC with selective fluorescence detection continues to be used for lAA analysis in some laboratories. Procedures, such as the 2-methylindolo-a-pyrone assay for lAA analysis [82], are now rarely utilised. With the exception of ethylene quantification [2] there is little use of non-MS-based GC detection techniques, despite the fact that selective analysis at the picogram level is achieved for ABA with an electron capture detector [83], and lAA and cytokinins with a nitrogen phosphorus detector [84,85]. The reason for the demise of these GC procedures is that the detectors are destructive and this precludes the reliable recovery of labelled internal standards for radioassay and isotopic dilution analysis. The usual compromise was to take two aliquots of the purified samples, one for GC analysis and the other for the determination of radioactivity. The accuracy of this approach is dependent upon the questionable assumption that the radioactivity in the purified sample is associated exclusively with the compound under study. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, a double standard isotope dilution procedure was devised for the quantitative analysis of lAA in which one internal standard was used to correct for losses during sample preparation and a second for GC quantification [86]. This procedure was used in several... 

The calibration of total protein, albumin, and specific protein methods remains a problem when analyzing samples from laboratory animals. Many of the available protein calibration materials are bovine or human in origin, and there are international reference proteins for some human proteins (Whicher 1984 Price and Newman 1997 Tiffany 1999). However, because calibration standards for laboratory animals are not widely available, the values between methods may show wide variations due to differences in calibrators. When some protein fractions are available for laboratory animals, these materials are often less than 95% pure. The investigator therefore... 

Looking forward to the consensus in science on CPR, representing a new international standard for care in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, with both European and American (ILCOR) collaboration and expected in 2005, laboratory and clinical investigations may be focusing on a number of issues ... 

While measuring Mn, it is very difficult to get a standard. Therefore, each laboratory makes its internal standard. For example, Munich AMS laboratory made Mn standard by irradiating Fe by 19 MeV He to produce Mn using the following nuclear reaction ... 

Thorpe, S.J., Heath, A., Blackmore, S., Lee, A., Hamilton, M., O Broin, S., Nelson, B.C., and Pfeiffer, C., 2007, International standard for serum vitamin B(12) and serum folate international collaborative study to evaluate a batch of lyophilised serum for B(12) and folate content. Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. 45 380-386. 

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