Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - May 2005
Comments? send them to the editor.

Accreditation of Canadian environmental laboratories

By Allan Maynard,
CCIL

Laboratory results form the cornerstone of environmental programs. Whether for contaminated site clean-up, drinking water assessments, discharge monitoring, occupational health, and others, all of these kinds of programs ultimately rely on data generated by a qualified laboratory. Companies, regulatory agencies, legal firms and other stakeholders must be confident in these results and one of the key components in obtaining this confidence is the official recognition or accreditation of the laboratory in question. It is, therefore, important that the accreditation process be properly understood.

Accreditation is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as “the procedure by which an authoritative body gives formal recognition that a body or person is competent to carry out specific tasks.” For laboratories, it is the formal recognition of a laboratory to carry out specific identified tests. The accreditation covers a laboratory’s overall quality management system, and its technical capability.

Accreditation in Canada is based on an international standard (ISO/IEC 17025). This standard is specific to testing and calibration laboratories. ISO has many other accreditation and certification programs such as the generally familiar ISO 9000 which pertains to an overall management system. The 17025 standard is similar in principal but offers a more technical and standardization dimension that is unique to the laboratory sector.

Laboratory accreditation involves the following components:

A proficiency testing (PT) program in which the laboratory must perform satisfactorily on samples that have been made in reference laboratories and are submitted by an accredited PT provider. A laboratory should, to the extent possible, analyze PT samples for every test under which it is accredited. Unfortunately, PT samples are not available for all parameters, although laboratories must display due diligence in attempting to source the appropriate materials. PT samples are submitted and then analyzed on a regular basis (usually twice per year).
An on-site assessment, in which qualified assessors review all aspects of a laboratory’s operation from basic management of samples that are submitted, right through to how the laboratory is managed. This is a rigorous process and for larger laboratories can involve three to five assessors auditing over a three to five day period. After the site assessment (audit), a laboratory must respond satisfactorily and within a specified time-frame to any corrective actions identified by the assessment team. Once this process is complete the laboratory is granted accreditation.

Agencies offering accreditation to Canadian laboratories Over the past 10 years in Canada (with the exception of Quebec), the accreditation of environmental laboratories has been managed in partnership by CAEAL (Canadian Association of Environmental Laboratories) and the SCC (Standards Council of Canada). CAEAL operated the PT program and carried out the site assessments. After this, on recommendations from CAEAL, the SCC granted accreditation through PALCAN (Program for the Accreditation of Laboratories in Canada). The SCC also annually assesses CAEAL’s PT program.

As of January, 2005, CAEAL and the SCC each offer their own full accreditation service rather than work in a partnership. There were some changes in ISO/IEC documentation pertaining to the official recognition of accreditation bodies that precipitated this change. Thus CAEAL and SCC will each accredit environmental laboratories in accordance with the ISO/IEC Standard 17025.

CAEAL will continue to operate its PT program and SCC will continue to audit CAEAL with respect to its PT program. SCC will not operate a PT program because it is a PT assessor in Canada. SCC will, however, recommend a list of approved PT providers to those laboratories that use SCC for accreditation.

In Quebec, environmental laboratories are accredited by MENV (the Quebec Ministry of the Environment) and this organization also provides the PT program. This program is also operated to the ISO 17025 standard and is comparable to the CAEAL/SCC program. The PT program mainly employs real environmental samples as opposed to the synthetic samples used by most other providers.

It is possible that other accreditation bodies (i.e. from the USA or Europe) will offer accreditation services in Canada and this should be acceptable to regulators, as long as these accreditation bodies have international recognition in accordance with ISO/IEC Standard 17025.

Organizations that provide ISO/IEC accreditation must in turn be fully recognized within the international standards community. For accreditation bodies to have this international accreditation they must be signatories to Mutual Recognition Agreements of international agencies such as the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), the Asia-Pacific Laboratory Cooperation (APLAC) and/or the Inter- America Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC). These are the international organizations that ensure a general standardization of measurement science, which, of course, is a necessity for global commerce. Specifically, they recognize signatories as international accreditation bodies.

These organizations assess SCC and CAEAL, and other laboratory assessment agencies, and this, in turn, provides the laboratory assessments that are carried out in Canada, with the required international recognition.

How do users assess the accreditation of a laboratory? It is clear that most users of environmental laboratories and those reviewing the resulting data require ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. It is, with few exceptions, essential.

Those organizations needing to use a professional laboratory need to be assured that:

The laboratory is accredited according to ISO/IEC Standard 17025.
That the accreditation is current and in good standing.
That the laboratory has, to the degree possible, carried out proficiency testing for all of the tests that are being purchased.

The accreditation bodies list the accredited laboratories on their web sites along with a list of tests (methods and parameters) each of these laboratories are accredited for (commonly referred to as the “Scope of Accreditation”). The list includes those tests that have been reviewed by the assessment team and, if PT samples are available, it means the laboratory’s performance is acceptable.

It is also important that laboratory users determine the accreditation requirements of the appropriate regulatory bodies. Currently, not all provincial regulators have formally endorsed 17025 (or CAEAL or SCC for that matter) as approved accreditors. In fact, the need for laboratory accreditation is absent from many regulatory documents in Canada.

Summary As of 2005, there will be at least three organizations providing accreditation of Canadian environmental laboratories: CAEAL (www.caeal.ca), SCC (www.scc.ca) and MENV. Other organizations from the USA or Europe may also come forward in the future.

In terms of regulations in Canada, CCIL (the Canada Council of Independent Laboratories) recommends that regulatory documents simply refer to ISO/IEC 17025 rather than name specific accreditation bodies or programs. It is vitally important that:

Laboratories — private and public — are free to make the most logical choice for their accreditation.
That all stakeholders (lab users, regulators, legal agencies, data reviewers) assist in preventing any need for dual accreditation. This is a waste of resources and does nothing to ensure better laboratory data.

Allan Maynard is Executive Director of CCIL, the Canadian Council of Independent Laboratories.
E-mail: allanmaynard@shaw.ca.

See our home page on how to order your subscription. We regret we can only accept orders from Canada.