Trace Laboratories is pleased to announce that it has been accredited by the U.S. Department of Defense Environmental Laboratory Accredidation Program (DoD-ELAP). This accreditation process took almost one year to complete and is an additional requirement to our NELAP certification for supporting DoD environmental restoration programs for Army, Navy, and Air Force projects.

DoD-ELAP accreditation provides a means for environmental laboratories to demonstrate their continued compliance with stringent QA/QC requirements. A key component of the accreditation process is the performance of quarterly Limit of Quantitation (LOQ) and Limit of Detection (LOD) samples. Every three months, the laboratory must prepare and analyze samples at the lowest concentration levels it reports to clients. This is done for each analytical test conducted. Results are documented to verify the laboratory's ability to achieve the reporting limits provided to its clients on their data reports. Upper and lower LOQ limits must also be developed and reported for all conducted tests. These serve to verify the degree of accuracy that can be expected for low-level sample results and must be reported on the client's reports. This goes beyond NELAP requirements that laboratories must conduct detection limit studies once per year. In addition, DoD-ELAP accreditation requires that our laboratory be audited yearly to ensure compliance meets all DoD requirements.

What this means for our clients: Environmental laboratories that are only required to conduct detection limit studies once per year normally clean their instruments just prior to the test. This ensures the instrument will perform optimally and produce a good value for the detection limit study. This does not guarantee that the instrument will perform well throughout the remainder of the year. In fact, instrument performance often falls off within 2-3 months. However, the DoD requirement mandates that laboratories continually keep their instruments clean and in optimal working condition. Otherwise, the laboratory would never be able to meet the requirements for quarterly LOQ and LOD verification. Trace clients receive more reliable test results, especially for analytes at or near the stated reporting limit. This can be extremely important for many environmental restoration projects, especially those with litigation potential.
 

For a copy of this certification, please contact:

Quality control manager
Alyson Yagiela
231.773.5998, x252
ayagiela@trace-labs.com

ISO/IEC 17025:2005