1. Interlaboratory Comparison Investigations (ICIs) for human biomonitoring of chromium as part of the quality assurance programme under HBM4EU.
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Nübler, Stefanie, Schäfer, Moritz, Haji-Abbas-Zarrabi, Karin, Marković, Stefan, Marković, Katarina, Esteban López, Marta, Castaño, Argelia, Mol, Hans, Koch, Holger M., Antignac, Jean-Philippe, Hajslova, Jana, Thomsen, Cathrine, Vorkamp, Katrin, and Göen, Thomas
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INDUCTIVELY coupled plasma mass spectrometry ,CHROMIUM ,QUALITY assurance ,BIOLOGICAL monitoring - Abstract
• HBM4EU QA/QC programme for high interlaboratory comparability of chromium analysis. • Interlaboratory comparison investigations (ICI) of chromium in urine, plasma, blood. • ICP-MS and EAAS appropriate for determination of occupational levels of chromium. • Improvement of analytical methods recommended for lower LOQs in Cr analyses. • European network for chromium analysis in 18 countries supports in risk assessment. The pan-European human biomonitoring initiative HBM4EU targets the harmonization of human biomonitoring (HBM) procedures and data for both environmental and occupational exposure, including chromium. The determination of chromium in urine (U-Cr), plasma (P-Cr) and whole blood (WB-Cr) is a common HBM application in employees occupationally exposed to chromium (VI) compounds. European laboratories which have registered as candidate laboratories for chromium analysis within HBM4EU were invited to participate in a quality assurance/qualitycontrol (QA/QC) programme comprising interlaboratory comparison investigations (ICI) for the parameters U-Cr, P-Cr and WB-Cr. Participating laboratories received two samples of different concentrations in each of four rounds and were asked to analyse the samples using their standard analytical procedure. The data were evaluated by the Z-score approach and were reported to the participants after each round. The majority of the 29 participating laboratories obtained satisfactory results, although low limits of quantification were required to quantify chromium concentrations in some of the ICI materials. The robust relative standard deviation of the participants' results (study RSD R) obtained from all ICI runs ranged from 6 to 16 % for U-Cr, 7–18 % for P-Cr and 4–47 % for WB-Cr. The application of both inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (EAAS) appeared appropriate for the determination of chromium in urine, plasma and whole blood with regard to occupational exposure levels. This QA/QC programme succeeded in establishing a network of laboratories with high analytical comparability and accuracy for the analysis of chromium across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
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