Report from EA Laboratory Committee - Athens

The 15th meeting of the EA laboratory committee took place in Athens on the 12 -13 of March 2008.  The meeting was attended by James Stapleton on behalf of INAB.

The new Chair of the committee is Christina Wadington from the Finnish Accreditation Body, FINAS, and at this meeting Andreas Steinhorst from the German Accreditation Body, DACH, was elected Vice-Chair.

Yoshinobu Uematsu representing the APLAC Technical Committee gave an interesting presentation on various aspects of the committee’s work.

Work is progressing at ILAC level on a revision of the document concerning minimum participation in proficiency testing schemes, P9, with attention being paid to the area of minimum frequency of participation and the classification of sub-disciplines and what these might constitute.

Other interesting topics discussed included a new directive that is pending on the water framework directive. Although not specifying the use of accredited laboratories it is expected that an acceptable way of demonstrating that the requirements of the new directive are being met.