SAMPLING & TESTING
Detecting something fishy in the water
The government-owned National Laboratory Service has a strategy to make itself more business-like, and is anticipating MCerts accreditation.
Natasha Wiseman met commercial
director Ian Rippin at IWEX
T
he Environment Agency’s dedicated laboratory service is now opening up to the commercial market to maximise its
capacity, the National Laboratory Service (NLS)’s commercial director Ian Rippin revealed. “As we emerge from being the Environment
Agency‘s dedicated labs, there‘s an opportunity for us to sell spare capacity and learn from the commercial market. This is around earning commercial revenues to offset the budget, so that‘s good news for the taxpayer and for the Agency in terms of what it costs to run the labs, but there are some softer benefits around service delivery.”
Rippin explained that three years ago the
Agency expected samples to be turned around in 56 days, as its brief was really one of number crunching for EU regulation. Now, he said, the EA
has a culture of investigation and locating the sources of pollution: “Today we compete with the best, so that‘s seven days, five days standard, so the Agency gets a much better service.” Rippin is confident that the service will remain government-owned for the foreseeable future and believes the board can make a success of the venture without the help of the private sector. A big investment has been made in seeking MCERTS accreditation. “We believe we will have the most
comprehensive MCERTS schedule for waters anywhere,” he said. “Now the awards happen in June, we‘ve had three or four UKAS visits, all very positive, so we‘re on track.“ MCERTS for labs is not only about testing, it covers people, equipment and laboratory processes. It is more exacting than existing UKAS
Meeting monitoring demands
The NLS is leading the way with new monitoring techniques for low level contaminants. The Passive Sampling (PS) device, or the “virtual fish”
, was launched in the UK with a workshop for
commercial and Environment Agency users at IWEX in April. It is the outcome of 20 years of research and development, and the NLS believes the device provides an efficient and cost- effective method to help businesses comply with the European Commission’s water legislation and monitoring demands. Commercial director Ian Rippin explained how PS works: “It’s
like a bag of fat that lives in the water like a fish and it absorbs contaminants over time,” he said. “It has an advantage over traditional spot sampling, a PS device will give you a time- weighted average of what’s actually happening over a period of time. You get lower levels.
4 Sampling & Monitoring May 2010
“It won’t tell you that it happened on Tuesday last week, but it will tell you it happened.” PS devices are nothing new. It is the associated analysis down to the lower levels required by the WFD that is this device’s distinguishing factor. . Anthony Gavell, technical specialist at Nat Labs, says that the
The Passive Sampling device (PS)
Environment Agency (EA) has used the device successfully for a number of projects, including the determination of sheep dip chemicals, such as cypermethrin in English and Welsh rivers, and to identify a wood preservative chemical, permethrin, which was contributing to the poor biology of a local water course.
New commercial opportunities are ahead for the NLS
schemes, insisting on consistent reporting levels. However, Rippin expresses concern that despite MCERTS being very demanding, there is no proper plan to police it and to ensure that the water companies see its value. This means that an MCERTS test may not
actually cost more than non-certificated testing. “Hopefully, we‘ll be ahead of the competition,” he said. ”But if it isn‘t going to be regulated, then why should you do it?” On a more positive note, Rippon concluded, “I think we will have the most comprehensive schedule, and so we should, given that we serve the regulator. I‘d love to say that means we‘re going to get loads of commercial advantage out of it, because I don‘t believe other labs are anywhere near where we are.”■■■
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