The Analytical Standards project
Croplife Europe offers our support for water monitoring programs by providing reference-standard compounds to certified laboratories. Good quality water monitoring requires solid chemical analytics, which in turn requires reference compounds for the confirmation and reliable quantification of monitoring detects.
If you plan to monitor surface water or groundwater for residues of pesticides or their metabolites and breakdown products, you may find that reference standard compounds for your chemicals of interest are not easily available. In that case, we may be able to help you and send you certified material, free of charge.
Please note that this standardized request workflow only applies to reference compounds in the context of water monitoring programs. If you are interested in larger amounts of compound as test material for research studies, we recommend to contact the respective company directly. Many companies are willing to support research projects; however, this generally requires more detailed discussions and cannot easily be standardized.
The ordering procedure comprises three simple steps:
- Fill in the request form (using one form per request compound – this can be downloaded at page bottom) and send them to Croplife Europe contact agata.pietrasiuk@croplifeeurope.eu/croplife-eu – Croplife Europe will forward your request to the company that holds the registration for your requested compound.
- You will be contacted by the company within 10 working days, to clarify details of your request and of the shipment.
- The company will send you the reference compound within another 10 working days (unless agreed differently).
The information in the request form is important for the quick and targeted processing of your request. Croplife Europe will of course treat these data confidentially and will only forward them to the company that holds the registration for your requested compound. We are asking if your organisation is willing to share the analytical data, because the companies are of course interested in monitoring results for their compounds. If you are not in a position to share the data in detail, e.g. due to confidentiality, it may still possible to give a summary of the results.
The companies are ready to support you with general and specific analytical information about the compound you are monitoring, and with the interpretation of the analytical results.
There are a few details that you should be aware of:
- The compound-providing company will inform you about any hazardous properties that the reference compound may have, by labeling it and providing a safety data sheet that complies with European legislation, as well as specific storage instructions, if applicable. This will allow you to define the appropriate handling methods and precautions to protect your staff. Ultimately, you are responsible for the safe and correct handling of the compound and for compliance with all legislation that may apply to your facility.
- The reference compound is solely provided for analytical purposes. It may not be used for any other purposes without the explicit consent of the supplier. It may also not be forwarded to third parties without the explicit consent of the supplier. Therefore, requests for amounts of > 100 mg will only exceptionally be considered, with a good justification.
- In certain instances, reference compound are already available from commercial suppliers. You may therefore be directed to order from the commercial supplier, depending on supply chain arrangements in place.
- In rare cases, the company may not provide the requested reference compound. This will be the exception and requires a plausible and transparent justification. One reason may be that the company does not have the reference compound available. Another reason may an apparently unreasonable request (e.g. a very large amount is ordered, or the requesting laboratory has very limited or no accreditation or experience) and the open questions cannot be resolved in direct discussions.