Keeping up to date on global quality standards and accreditation is vital in the world of chemicals and standards. With ever-developing products, it can become quite overwhelming when navigating your way through sourcing materials. At Delta, we try and give our customers as much advice as we can when it comes to sourcing.
Key considerations for sourcing chemicals and standards
An important point when sourcing is to never compromise on purity, using impure materials will lead to a less accurate stock solution and you can run the risk of introducing contaminants.
Another key factor to consider is whether you require your product to meet accreditation requirements, as you will find that not all chemicals and standards are Certified Reference Materials (CRMs). It’s also helpful to be wary of expiration dates, however, this may not be an issue for you, as it completely depends on how quickly the material is planned to be used.
Getting it right
Time and care should be taken when sourcing chemicals and standards, it’s vital that you should start with the correct materials. No matter how carefully a method may be planned out, there can always be potential for errors of any size.
Any error, big or small, could cause devastating consequences to the process. This could include delayed results, samples and reference materials going to waste, plus a loss to finances and time.
Quality marks and accreditations
Research chemical sourcing can often have a few minefields that you must be aware of as a customer, knowing exactly what to look for in your product will be integral to your process. Quality marks or accreditations can differ depending on variables, such as your lab requirements. These certifications include ISO lab standards and ICP MS standard solutions. Generally, you should be looking for the following:
- The ISO 9000 family of quality management systems (QMS). This is defined as a set of international standards regarding both quality management and quality assurance, it has been developed to ensure companies document the quality system elements that are needed to keep an efficient system of quality.
- The ISO/IEC 17025 general requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. These enable laboratories to promote confidence in their work on a global scale by demonstrating competent operations and valid results, which allows for material to be considered reference materials (RM).
- The general requirements for ISO 17034 refer to the competence of reference material producers and allow for materials to be considered CRMs.
- Conformity assessment ISO/IEC 17043:2010 general requirements for proficiency testing, this is required for an Accredited Proficiency Testing Provider.
Something to bear in mind when looking further into accreditations would be the firm difference between RM and CRM. Reference Material refers to material that is sufficiently homogeneous and stable with respect to one or more specified properties that have been established to be fit for intended use in a measurement process.
Whereas Certified Reference Material would be Reference Material characterized by a metrologically valid procedure for one or more specified properties. This is accompanied by a certificate that provides the value of the specified property, its associated uncertainty, and a statement of metrological traceability.
Delta hopes that these top sourcing tips will help in any chemical research and development situation. To get more advice please contact the Delta team via info@delta-sci.com