Chemical and environmental sampling: Quality through accreditation, certification and industrial standards

In the CEN/STAR Trends Analysis workshop on Sampling, initiated by request of the Nordic Innovation Centre, specially invited experts provided presentations on demands about regulation concerning sampling quality, sampling standard developments, quality assurance systems and practical experience from different sampling situations and cases. The workshop arrived at recommendations on the importance of proper sampling for environmental and product control purposes, especially to support European regulations, trade agreements and monitoring of environment. Sampling is an integrated part of the whole measurement process and should therefore be especially considered from the viewpoint of the end-user of the results. There is a need for raising quality control issues in sampling and for the establishment of a more uniformly co-ordinated European quality system for sampling. With the standard methods available, there are in principle two different ways of achieving third party assessment of the sampling protocols and procedures: accreditation of sampling organisations based upon international, national, or in-house standards and methods, and certification of individual samplers’ competences for sampling. Several activities or efforts as well as research and standardisation needs for raising the quality issues in sampling were identified and presented in a paper by the workshop.