INTERLABORATORY STUDY ON DECA-BDE ANALYSIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLES INVOLVING ROUTINE LABORATORIES

In September 2005, the EU-project NORMAN has been launched in order to establish a network of reference laboratories and related organisations dealing with the monitoring of emerging environmental pollutants (http://www.norman-network.de). The network provides a platform for the exchange of information and data on emerging pollutants between monitoring laboratories, research centres, competent authorities, and end-users across the European Union. The main objective of this network is to support risk assessment by ensuring the quality and comparability of data. For that purpose, validation protocols have been developed specifically designed to support the harmonised optimisation and validation of analytical methods for monitoring of emerging pollutants. In order to test the developed validation protocols and the ability of the network to meet European demands for monitoring of emerging pollutants, three interlaboratory studies have been undertaken. One of the three case studies, which have been conducted within the EU-project NORMAN had the aim to test the protocol for method validation at the routine level and to transfer knowledge from expert to routine laboratories. Decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), an emerging pollutant that belongs to the group of brominated flame retardants, seemed to be a proper model compound for this case study. On the one hand there is the need for monitoring according to the recently completed risk assessment