CERTIFIED REFERENCE MATERIALS - USE, MANUFACTURE AND CERTIFICATION

The present scientific and technological challenges rely heavily on the fundamental support lent by the science of measurement in general and analytical chemistry in particular. For a thorough exploitation of this discipline a massive number of reference materials are required in fields as diverse as environmental protection, biomedicine, industrial activities and many others. It is therefore of the greatest importance that new reference materials are devised and produced. Given the limited financial resources that can be allocated for this purpose at national and international levels, the decision-making process should be judicious enough so as to evaluate carefully actual needs, benefits expected and costs involved. Once the target has been identified as regards the host matrix and properties to be certified, an overall scheme must be designed which should include a plan for the collection of a sufficient amount of material, its preliminary treatment, homogenization and stabilization, selection of participants in the certification campaign, execution of the actual plan, evaluation of experimental results, possible approval of the candidate reference material and eventual release to customers. As all these phases are extremely time consuming and expensive, no effort should be spared toward preventing misuse or incorrect use by unaware operators. Detailed information on this specific aspect should be conveyed to the user in all possible ways in order to minimize the deleterious consequences of erroneous procedures on the quality of analytical data.