The protection of the environment is becoming an increasingly urgent need. Climate change, the depletion of natural resources and industrial pollution are some of the problems that the whole world is facing, affecting not only the environment, but our everyday life. Analytical measurements offer tools for monitoring and regulating both hazards and human exposure, and additionally for discovering emerging new pollutants, and thereby enabling improvements to the situation.

As legislation on environmental protection becomes more demanding, with lower concentration limits and more analytes for monitoring being added, the analytical challenges multiply, not only at the analytical stage, but also at the sampling stage.
Sampling is an essential step for scientists to obtain reliable results and make accurate evaluations of the environmental situation. The theme of World Environment Day 2025 is 'Beat Plastic Pollution'. In this context, microplastics are one of the emerging pollutants that have sparked much discussion and study in recent years. Sampling is an important part of reliably measuring microplastics.

This year, Eurachem released a new supplementary guide for validation of measurement procedures that include sampling (VaMPIS), which aims to provide tools for including the effects of sampling, as the often-overlooked first step in the measurement process. This new guide contains case studies from various sectors, including environmental pollution. It was prepared by a joint group comprising the Measurement Uncertainty of Sampling and Method Validation Working Groups of Eurachem, in collaboration with Eurolab. Click here to download the guide.

Marios Kostakis

Co-Chair, Joint Task Group on Validation of Measurement Procedures that Include Sampling

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Published: Tuesday, 03 June 2025 07:36

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