Applicability in Analytical Laboratories

Since a quality assurance programme involves more work, increased costs and additional paperwork, one may be tempted to ask: What are the benefits? Is it worth the cost?

The main benefit of a quality assurance programme in an XRF Laboratory is that it provides assurance to the laboratory itself, as well as those who rely on its services, that it is operating under control and that it is producing data of consistent and proven quality.

On the question of costs you should consider the following situation. Suppose you are doing an XRF analysis that cost $100 to perform and, for whatever reason, you get a wrong result. This means you have just spent $100 to obtain perfectly useless information. Furthermore, costly decisions may be made on the basis of this erroneous information.

Application of quality assurance to routine XRF analytical testing is fairly well established with widespread availability of general and specific guidance, both on general principles and in support of quality standard and accreditation/certification schemes.

The application to non-routine work is less straightforward and available guidance results mainly from "adapting" more "flexible" standards. Nevertheless, in any XRF Laboratory it is possible to address quality at several levels. The same elements of technical Quality Assurance are applicable to non-routine measurements and Research & Development as are applied to routine work. However, the approach taken to their implementation must be different.