Certified Reference Material for Traceability in Environmental Analysis: PAHs in Toluene

Certified reference material (CRM) plays a vital role for quality control assurance in environmental analysis, because the quality of data arising from measurements has crucial importance. This article presents the results from studies carried out for certification of a candidate reference material composed by sixteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) dissolved in toluene (naphthalene, acenaphthylene, acenaphtene, fluorene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene, chrysene, benzo[a]anthracene, pyrene, benzo[k]fluoranthene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[a]pyrene, dibenzo[a,h]anthacene, indeno[123-cd]pyrene and benzo[ghi]perylene). This is the first Brazilian PAH CRM developed by Inmetro. The certification procedure includes validation of the GC/IDMS method (isotopic dilution mass spectrometry coupled to gas chromatography), homogeneity study, stability studies under transport and storage conditions and estimation of measurement uncertainties.