Quality control — national laboratories

The major characteristics usually included in national and international standards and trading specifications and used for quality control in laboratories are as follows. 

Chemical plants also consist of process buildings, storage and warehouse buildings, control houses, laboratories, and general offices. Depending on tlie nature of activity and tlie quality of the contents, tlie structural requirements and protection features will vary. Building standards are defined by the National Code of the American Insurance Association. 

To oversee this surveillance, the European Union has developed a system based on four fundamental cornerstones and controlled by four Community Reference Laboratories (Decision 91/664/EEC) hierarchically linked to a series of 36 authorized National Laboratories (Decision 93/257/EEC). The four cornerstones are a program of reference materials (53), a set of regularly updated mandatory minimum quality criteria for analytical techniques (54-57), a series of Reference Manuals (58, 59), and a continuous series of laboratory workshops plus a future Peer Review Group (60). 

We are working with the Food Quality Control Department of the Ministry of Health to study the contamination of OCPs and PCBs in local fish and chickens. This project is in line with our current effort to assess the health risk arising from consumption of food contaminated with POP chemicals. The health risk assessment of POPs through dietary intakes project involved analyses of OCPs and PCBs in various foodstuff, initially raw materials which will be extended to cooked food. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the capability to analyze PCDD/PCDF in our laboratory but there are two high resolution mass spectrometers in the country that are capable of analyzing PCDD/PCDF. National and international collaborations will definitely improve the country capacity to monitor POPs not only those listed in the Stockholm Convention but other toxic chemicals found in the environment. 

Joint projects should be established between FAO and WHO (WHOPES) to strengthen the capacity of national and subregional analytical laboratories for pesticide quality control. In addition, both organizations should explore the possibility of other joint projects to support the implementation of the Code of Conduct. 

A/ote CRMs can be obtained from appropriate suppliers, e.g. Laboratory of the Government Chemist in the UK or the National Institute for Science and Technology in lihe USA. In addition to the CRM, a certificate is provided that contains information on the ebneentration of various metals within the sample. as well as their variation (normally quoted as one standard deviation either side of the mean value), e.g. 2.5 0.3 igg Pb, CRMs are used to test the accuracy of a new method or to enable a quality control scheme to be operated by a commercial laboratory. In practical work they are useful to assess student performance in terms of his/her ability to prepare and analyse a sample. 

Quality Control Program for Radiochemical and Gamma Spectroscopy Analysis, Rep. UCRL-ID-120429, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA (1995). 

Because of their increasing use worldwide, plant materials used in over-the-counter preparations, home remedies, or as raw materials for pharmaceutical preparations are receiving more and more attention. In 1998, WHO published a book. Quality Control Methods for Medicinal Plant Materials to fulfill the needs of quality control laboratories and to provide a basis for the development of national standards. ... 

For food safety and quality control, a number of other CRMs would be very much welcomed. Many requests are made for matrix matched CRMs and PTMs. Especially official food and feed control laboratories and moreover the Community and National Reference Laboratories are dependent on fit-for-purpose validated analytical methods and real matrix reference materials. 

When the situation is favorable, missions can be accomplished that involve expertise and training and affect the whole pharmaceutical field. Examples of such missions include restoration of industrial drug production capabilities and reinstatement of a national laboratory for drug quality control with subsequent training of technicians. 

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