Abstract.
Traceability of measurements still often remains a non-operational notion for end-user chemists. A practical project, sponsored by the French Ministry of Research, has been conducted to evaluate and to demonstrate possible benefits of the implementation of a metrological structure for improvement of the quality of water analyses. LNE (Laboratoire National d'Essais) was in charge of the build up of the traceability chain in a concrete case of determination of some heavy metals (cadmium and lead) in a groundwater. Pure solutions for calibration and a matrix RM have been certified by LNE and then used by 46 labs (mainly French) in a inter-laboratory study. Results have shown a measurable bias in lead analysis in the groundwater for all methods in routine use by laboratories. This project has demonstrated the interest of a metrological approach for method calibration, method validation and estimation of measurement uncertainty.
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Acknowledgements.
This work was part of the METREAU project financially supported by the French Ministry of Research and it was performed under the auspices of the Réseau RITEAU. The authors acknowledge all the partners of this project: Anne-Marie Fouillac and Stéphane Roy from BRGM, Marie Lafargue from BIPEA, Didier Lagoutte from Merck Eurolab, Laurent Ley from LDAR and the two experts from the scientific committee: Jean-Michel Mermet (University of Lyon) and Philippe Quevauviller (EU Commission). The authors are very grateful for the continuing support provided by our colleagues at LNE: Michèle Désenfant, Béatrice Lalère, Cédric Rivier and Guillaume Labarraque. The participation of Dr Bertil Magnusson from the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute (SP) was fully appreciated. The authors also acknowledge Dr Igor Maksimov from VNIIFRI for his advice in reviewing this manuscript.
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Charlet, P., Marschal, A. Benefits of the implementation of a metrological structure for water analyses. Accred Qual Assur 8, 467–474 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00769-003-0658-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00769-003-0658-0