Perkin Elmer Obtains NIST Accreditation

15-08-2002: SHELTON, Conn. August 14, 2002 - PerkinElmer Instruments announced today that it has been accredited by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP), a function of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as a manufacturer and supplier of NIST Traceable Reference Materials (NTRMs) for the majority of commercially available UV/Vis spectrophotometers. By providing NTRMs, PerkinElmer Instruments is helping Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) organizations verify the ordinate calibration of their instruments and meet regulatory needs.

"Many of our customers operate in regulated environments so an accredited traceability path is exactly what they need to provide evidence of calibration to an external auditor," said David Spaight, vice president of global sales and service for PerkinElmer Instruments. "The NIST accreditation is a testimony to our commitment to technical excellence," he added.

PerkinElmer's NVLAP accreditation (NVLAP Lab Code 200570-0) is specifically for the certification and re-certification of NTRM PKI 930 and 1930, which are equivalent to NIST SRM 930 and 1930.

In order to ensure the validity of their results, customers periodically check their instrument calibrations against reference materials. They use secondary reference materials that have been calibrated against primary reference materials in the instrument vendor's laboratory. The majority of these laboratories, however, are not accredited, and therefore do not offer customers the same level of assurance as an accredited facility.

NIST initiated the NTRM program to improve the availability and widespread usage of traceable reference materials, while maintaining the technical quality and process integrity expected from a national standards laboratory.

To be appointed as an NTRM supplier, PerkinElmer's reference material certification laboratory in Shelton, Conn., was subjected to the closest technical scrutiny, resulting in accreditation by NVLAP, including compliance with all requirements of ISO/IEC 17025: 1999.