Quality Matters Columns

Peter Jenks is off to a conference. He describes the history of the Biological and Environmental Reference Materials (BERM) series of conferences and concludes that they still are important for all of us 30 years after their start. He urges you to attend the next, in October 2015 in the USA.

Peter Jenks clarifies “What is a ‘Primary Standard’?”.

Peter Jenks and John Hammond describe how the important ISO 17025 standard has developed, and point out that a review for the third edition of the standard will start soon. All those with an interest in quality standads—an increasing number of us—should make sure their voice is heard at their local standards body.

Peter Jenks has discovered quantitative NMR. in his article titled “NMR: is it the future for the analysis of organic molecules?”. If only it wasn’t so expensive, it might be the perfect method to certify pure organic compounds.

Peter Jenks looks at some current trends in the supply of CRMs and proficiency testing and highlights difficulties labs may have been when no commercial CRM is available. This will be followed with a second part looking at the production of in-house reference materials.

Chris Burgess and John Hammond respond to Peter Jenks' thoughts in the last issue's Quality Matters Column. Please join in the debate and add your comments at the end of the article.

Peter Jenks is concerned at the lack of mutual help available on the Internet within the field of analytical chemistry. Other fields, outside science, have strong communities where enthusiasts give freely of their advice and time; why not in analytical chemistry? Please tell us your views by adding a comment to this column article.

The 33^rd meeting of the Reference Material Committee of ISO, ISO/REMCO was held in Hangzhou (China) from 3 to 7 May 2010, and was hosted by the Standardisation Administration of China and the China Association of Standardisation. ISO/REMCO now has a membership of 70 members of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and liaison with 18 international organisations and seven ISO-internal committees. The new ISO TC liaison introduced at this meeting is with ISO/TC 158 “Analysis of gases”, with Dr Adriaan van der Veen acting as the REMCO liaison officer.

Continuing the series of articles on spectroscopy, we return principally to the UV-visible area of the spectrum, but this time to the science of luminescence (fluorescence and phosphorimetry), in all its many forms. Given the diversity of the application areas and instrument types available, in such an article we can only briefly give an overview of the topic and interested parties are, therefore, recommended to follow-up the listed references for more in-depth discussion on the points raised.