Measurement Uncertainty for Laboratory Customers

Contents

This information leaflet is intended for customers of laboratories perfoming chemical analyses.The leaflet tells customers why laboratories report measurement uncertainty.  It is based on the Swedish leaflet SP INFO 2000:23 which has been prepared by SP and FaL in collaboration with the Swedish EPA, The Swedish National food Adm., VAV and Swedac; part of the work has been carried out in the frame of the Swedish SME-project KMoo P0 07313. The English version on this website has been prepared together with Eurachem, Eurolab, EA and EMPA.

Availability

• View/download the document in English (pdf, 560 kB)
• View/download the document in German (pdf, 570 kB)
• View/download the document in Portuguese (pdf, 590 kB)
• View/download the document in Turkish (pdf, 880 kB)

Translations

Translation into other languages is permitted for members of Eurachem, by kind permission of RISE, Sweden (formerly SP). Please contact the MU&T WG Secretary to confirm permission and for source files.

Information leaflets

Eurachem Information Leaflets are short briefing documents on a specific topic. Information leaflets are usually intended to inform a wide audience, including laboratory staff, managers and laboratory customers. Like Guides, Information Leaflets are developed by the different Working Groups, often in cooperation with other organisations. Eurachem information leaflets are all available free of charge from the website. Many have been translated into several languages.

Current Eurachem Information Leaflets

The current list of topics and information leaflets is given below. All leaflets are available in English; availability in additional languages is indicated below. "Translations available" indicates that more than four language versions (including English) are available.

Accreditation

• ISO/IEC 17025:2017 - A New Accreditation Standard (2018) | Translations available

Proficiency testing

• Proficiency Testing Schemes and other interlaboratory comparisons (2005) | Translations available
• How can Proficiency Testing help my laboratory? (2013) | Translations available
• Selecting the right proficiency testing scheme for my laboratory (2015) | Translations available
• Proficiency testing - How much, and how often? (2017) | Translations available
  
• Pre- and post-analytical proficiency testing (2009) | Translations available
• Use of surplus Proficiency Test items (2019) | Translations available
• How to investigate poor performance in proficiency testing (2019) | Translations available
• PT Schemes for sampling (2020) | Translations available

Measurement uncertainty and traceability

• Information leaflet for lab customers concerning the quality of chemical analyses (2000) | German, Portuguese, Turkish
• Traceability of Analytical Results (2019*) | Translations available
• Use of uncertainty information in compliance assessment (2021) | Farsi, German
• Using repeated measurements to improve the standard uncertainty (2015) | Translations available
• Treatment of an observed bias (2017) | Translations available
  
• Setting target measurement uncertainty (2018) | Translations available
• What is the uncertainty factor? (2021) | German

*First published 2005; Earlier versions and translations available

Method validation

• The importance of method validation (2021) | Farsi, German, Turkish

Terminology

• You talk, we understand – The way out of the tower of Babel
  An introduction to terminology in measurement
  (2015) | Translations available