Promoting analytical quality control of trace-element data to be presented in international journals and reports

The analytical quality of published data on trace elements in food has previously been shown to be of a generally poor quality and, therefore, not always reliable. The responsibility for this problem is shared among authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers, and it is based on the lack of clear instructions, to all parties, on how quality should be safeguarded. This has been noted by CEN/TC 275/WG 10, which has started preliminary work on such a guideline. This paper describes the background and what such a guideline could be based on.