Summary of needs

Accreditation is mainly concerned with routine tests or analysis. It includes the use of reference materials (e.g. LRMs or in-house RMs) for control charts which are hardly available on the market it is hence timely to start producing RMs for routine analysis in high quantities and at low cost for those measurements which have a major economic importance in relation to social and environmental implications as mentioned above, such a production should follow minimum quality requirements to avoid commercialisation and use of bad quality products which would only add to confusion. There is obviously a need to focus/consolidate technical expertise for CRM production in a few centres of excellence and actions should be stimulated to create a possible network of CRM producers which should be composed of practitioners , i.e. experts in both the production of CRMs and the respective analytical fields, so that questions arising from routine laboratories could be readily and practically responded to [44] while efforts made by metrological laboratories to create a system of metrology in chemistry are certainly important, these are far remote from the needs of routine laboratories which, however, carry out the vast majority of analytical work worldwide. Pragmatism should 

The systematic verification of the performance of methods should also be strengthened. In some cases this is not possible owing to a lack of calibrants of suitable stoichiometry and purity (e.g. in the field of speciation analysis). The production of new calibrants should hence be envisaged, particularly as it was shown that, in environmental analyses, pure substances or calibration solutions obtained from various suppliers might differ significantly [45]. 

Matrix-matched CRMs are increasingly needed for a range of environmental matrices, elements or compounds, including materials certified for of erationally-defined parameters (e.g. extractable trace element contents). Finally, training on the preparation of LRMs and use of CRMs should be systematised in the framework of accreditation systems. Such courses already exist [46] but are not fitted for purpose with respect to accreditation they should involve advice on how to develop LRMs versus CRMs, use RMs in sectorial proficiency testing (e.g. environmental monitoring) etc. 

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