In Search of the Quality of Micro and Nano Plastics Analysis and Reference Materials.

The environmental monitoring of plastics is positioned high on the agenda of countries and international organisations worldwide. Large scale national and regional monitoring programs are however hampered by the lack of urgently needed harmonised analytical methods and reference materials for QA/QC of these methods. Data on the presence of plastics in the environment varies largely regarding quality and comparability. Robust and validated harmonised methods and QA/QC tools still missing. Interlaboratory studies are an efficient way to achieve this and both gather information on the state of the art, can be used to validate the methods in terms of uncertainty and to select candidate reference materials. Here we will present the result of two ILS studies of which one is currently on-going and the approach of the new EU project EUROqCHARM which will focus on the harmonisation of analytical methods for nano-, micro- and macro plastic in environmental samples and the production of reference material.