MENU2010 was a FDA/USDA Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) exercise designed to assess some of the analytical capabilities of 38 participant laboratories following a radiological emergency. MENU2010 had two parts: a one-week part simulating the immediate aftermath of an emergency; a three-week part simulating the latter stages of an emergency. Participants could analyze any or all of 10 food-radionuclide combinations using methods of their choice; some developed methods specifically for MENU2010. Of the 10 data sets, 9 were non-normally distributed, 7 had a significant high or low bias, and 9 had standard deviations in excess of any reasonable experimental error. Results of those who analyzed multiple samples of a given combination were significantly more accurate than those who analyzed just one. MENU2010 was valueable in establishing a baseline method accuracy of the FERN laboratories. A future exercise would be valuable in determining the progress of the FERN laboratrories.

MENU2010: a FDA/USDA radiological capability and capacity inter-laboratory comparison exercise

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.