Thirteenth international symposium on biological and environmental reference materials (BERM-13)

Abstract

The 13th international symposium on biological and environmental reference materials (BERM-13) was held at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Headquarters in Vienna, Austria, from 25 to 29 June 2012. The BERM-13 carried on a series of BERM Symposia, which was launched in 1983 and has been held on a regular basis since then [1–3]. As one of the main producers of reference materials (RMs) characterized for radionuclides and stable isotope amount ratios, the IAEA has a specific interest in biological and environmental reference materials and has been actively involved in BERM symposia since their inception. However, this was the first time that the symposium was organized by the IAEA. The main symposium topics were: recent developments, current trends and future needs for RMs; selection and proper use of RMs; the role of RMs in assuring harmonization and comparability of measurement results; availability and distribution of RMs; and education and training related to RMs production and their use. The symposium was organized in several sessions, namely food and reference materials; standardization, metrology and international cooperation; health, medicine and forensic; reference materials production, trends and techniques; environmental reference materials; including plenary sessions each day and two poster sessions. Taking the advantage of the fact that BERM-13 was organized as an IAEA conference, three special sessions were also organized on topics of high importance to the IAEA and in general, namely special sessions on environmental nuclear fingerprints, stable isotope reference materials and reference materials for emergency situations. Altogether there were 92 oral presentations (4 opening remarks, 23 invited, and 65 oral lectures), 77 posters, and 3 round table discussions. The symposium was attended by 197 participants from 49 countries and five international organizations (the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—BIPM, the European Commission/Joint Research Centre—EC/JRC, the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & Health Care—EDQM, the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization—ISO). The highlights of the BERM-13 symposium were invited presentations, covering RMs related to food and human nutritional status and biomarkers (S. Wise, C. M. Pfeifer, USA), metabolomics (K. W. Phinney, USA), RMs required to support harmonized human biomonitoring programs (M. Horvat, Slovenia), RMs needed for key enabling technologies (H. Emons, EC/JRC/IRMM), RMs for pharmaceuticals (A. Lodi, CE/EDQM), elemental speciation (O. Donard, France) and nanoscale RMs (D. L. Keiser, USA), new organic stable isotope RMs (A. Schimmelmann, USA), as well as lectures related to large RM programs (T. Saito, Japan; Z. Mester, Canada; M. Betti, IAEA), legislation (A. Held, EC/JRC/IRMM), top metrology (M. Kuehne, BIPM), and certain technical requirements, for example, stability testing and monitoring strategies (S. L. R. Ellison, UK). The special sessions have, among others, revealed a strong need for new environmental RMs suitable for low-level radioactivity measurements. This is an area where new very sensitive measurement techniques have been developed for characterization of ‘hot particles’ but face a lack of appropriate quality assurance tools. A similar situation was presented in the case of RMs for emergency preparedness, where the Gulf oil spill (M. M. Schantz, USA; A. R. Wagener, Brazil) A. Fajgelj (&) International Atomic Energy Agency, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, Vienna International Centre, PO Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria e-mail: A.Fajgelj@iaea.org