Re: Urine Bioassays

["Robert M. Loesch" <loesch@spok.eh.doe.gov>]

At 04:21 PM 2/7/96 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Hi all:
>
>Once again I am looking for information.  I am looking for a certified lab 
>to run urine bioassays.  

There is no such thing as a "certified" lab for radiobioassay.  All that exists
now is user experience which, hopefully but not always, should include blind 
quality assurance testing.  Each user has their own requirements such as turn
around times and minimum sensitivies so what might be adequate for one site may
not be adequate for another site if they have substantially different bioassay
frequencies.  There are many problems out there from labs falsifying data
(rare) to sites not performing any QA testing and blinding accepting the 
provided results.

ANSI N13.30 has recently been approved and, in an effort to get this important 
standard out to the user community, DOE is funding the HPSSC to do a special
mailing of the standard separate from the usual newsletter enclosure.  You 
should see it sometime in March.  DOE is planning on initiating a bioassay
accreditation program based upon this standard.  Can't respond for what the
NRC may be planning in this area.

Moral of the story:  before you contract, investigate, perform pre-award
testing, and include QA provisions into the contract to give you an out for
poor performance.

>sinisterra@adp.uchc.edu
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>Andrés
>
>==================================
>Andres Sinisterra
>Asst. R.S.O. for Medicine
>University of Connecticut Health Center
>==================================
>
>
********************************************************
Robert M. Loesch
DOELAP Administrator
U.S. Department of Energy
Germantown, MD 20874
(301) 903-4443
loesch@spok.eh.doe.gov
********************************************************
Random number generation is too important a task
            to  be left to chance!