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News article8 July 2019

Call for laboratories to participate in proficiency tests on microplastics in drinking water and sediments

2019_science_hub_microplastics2.jpg
Call for laboratories to participate in proficiency tests on microplastics in drinking water and sediments
© EU, 2019

The JRC, together with the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), is launching a call for expert laboratories, to participate in the proficiency tests on specific microplastics in water (bottled water, drinking water) and polyethylene in sediments.

Background

Microplastics and possibly also nanoplastics, are becoming widely spread throughout the environment.

Concerns are growing that they may present a risk to the environment and human health via contamination of water, food, soil and air.

However, there is a lack of harmonised analytical measurement procedures (including sampling) and quality assurance tools such as validated methods and reference materials. This hinders the generation of reliable and comparable data.

We need to urgently address this deficiency, to reduce existing data gaps about presence of of microplastics in the environment and in particular the possible exposure through food, including drinking water.

In order to tackle this problem the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) will be taking a number of actions.

Call for expert laboratories

As a first step, the JRC, in collaboration with the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) will organise proficiency tests on specific microplastics (food grade polyethylene terephthalate) in water (bottled water, drinking water) and polyethylene in sediments.

The proficiency tests will be organised in autumn 2019.

All interested expert laboratories are kindly invited to express their interest for participating until 1st September 2019 via the following email address:

JRC contact: jrc-microplasticsatec [dot] europa [dot] eu (jrc-microplastics[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

Interested laboratories will receive further information about the details of the PT including the official invitation by 15 September 2019.

Details

Publication date
8 July 2019