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A new sediment Certified Reference Material to check the "health" status of EU water bodies

26 March 2018

The JRC released ERM®-CC537a, a new freshwater sediment Certified Reference Material (CRM) for the analysis of flame retardants (polybrominated diphenyl ethers and hexabromocyclododecane). These pollutants are among the priority substances regulated by the EU Water Framework Directive. ERM®-CC537a will increase accuracy and comparability of measurement results in the evaluation of the EU surface water quality.


PBDEs and HBCD are ubiquitous, persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic substances, capable of long-range transport that can be found for decades in the aquatic environment. They are hydrophobic pollutants, known to likely accumulate in sediment and/or biota rather than in the water phase. Member States need to arrange for the long-term trend analysis of these pollutants and shall take measures aimed at ensuring that their levels do not significantly increase in sediment and/or biota.

For ensuring the quality of the water monitoring results, the WFD daughter Directive 2009/90/EC requires the appointed laboratories to demonstrate their competence through the use of Reference Materials that are representative of collected samples.

Therefore, ERM®-CC537a was produced as a naturally contaminated freshwater dried sedimentand it is the first CRM ever available for the analysis of HBCD in sediment.

Another batch of this CRM was used as study material for the Key Comparison CCQM-K102, polybrominated diphenyl ethers in sediment, coordinated by the JRC under the auspices of the Organic Analysis Working Group of the Comité Consultatif pour la Quantité de Matière. More than ten National Metrology Institutes participated to this interlaboratory comparison and the assigned Key Comparison Reference Values agree with the certified values of ERM®-CC537a [Metrologia 54 08026].

ERM®-CC537a will be useful as quality assurance/quality control tool in the hands of environmental laboratories for validating analytical methods and for checking the accuracy of measurement results to be reported under the WFD.

Further details on ERM®-CC537a can be found in the certificate and certification report available in our on-line catalogueERM-CC537a.


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