The Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) network was established in 2016 with NIH funding to support (among other goals) targeted analyses of children’s biological samples for multiple environmental pollutants. The CHEAR network includes 6 laboratory centers with expertise in analyzing blood, urine and serum for toxic pollutants, including metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury. The six CHEAR labs were enrolled into the New York State Deptartment of Health’s (NYS DOH) Proficiency Testing (PT) Program for Biomonitoring Trace Elements to monitor interlaboratory performance, and provide evidence of data harmonization to support children’s health studies. The NYS DOH coordinated an initial characterization of measurement accuracy and traceability to SI units by conducting an educational round robin based on archived PT samples, and by using two NIST Standard Reference Materials (SRM) for blood and urine: NIST SRM 955c Toxic Metals in Caprine Blood and SRM 2668 Toxic Metals in Human Urine. Following initial characterization, blinded blood, urine and serum PT samples were circulated as part of the three regular PT events in 2016 (5 samples per matrix, per event) among the six CHEAR lab hubs and up to 25 other biomonitoring labs. Not all CHEAR labs provided results for the same elements in the first events, although several increased the number of elements that could be determined over the time-period of the test events. Fig 1 shows each individual CHEAR lab's limit of detection (*) for urinary As by ICP-MS, along with their respective tri-level quality control samples for this assay. Initially, performance varied widely among the six CHEAR labs, indicating the need for improvement in internal quality assurance procedures, staff training and access to standard operating procedures. Recent results indicate a gradual improvement in performance using ICP-MS.

Traceability and interlaboratory harmonization of ICP-MS trace element data for the Children Health Environmental Analytical Resource (CHEAR)

254th National Meeting (2017)

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