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It has come to our attention that NIST may cut the program which designs and produces Ion Chromatography Standard Reference Materials (SRMs). We understand that current administration budget cuts are a reality and have to be dealt with. However, we sincerely hope that the Ion Chromatography line is not cut. Instead, we encourage NIST to add products to this line.

As a private standards manufacturer, we rely heavily upon NIST SRMs for all of our products. The availability of NIST SRMs allows us to perform a direct instrument or wet chemical assay using the NIST SRM as the standard. This saves us an extraordinary amount of time. It also allows us to perform in-house method validation and it increases the confidence that we and our customers have in the accuracy of the standards we produce.

How could this effect you?

To produce a standard that is not directly traceable to a nationally recognized organization such as NIST would be a definite step in the wrong direction. NIST has earned international recognition and respect in the production of Standard Reference Materials and the US scientific and business communities will most certainly suffer if NIST drops any program involved in the production of SRMs -- especially one such as the Ion Chromatography line, which is so necessary to such a wide variety of industries.

We hope that NIST has future plans to increase the variety of SRMs available, especially in the Ion Chromatography area. In less than thirty years, IC and ICP-OES / MS, have become the two most relied upon analytical techniques in the inorganic analytical community. These techniques are dependent upon accurate standards. The production of such accurate analytical standards has been made possible primarily because of the availability of SRMs produced by NIST.

What you can do to help

To help NIST retain the Ion Chromatography line, you can lend support by contacting Inorganic Ventures directly. E-mail our technical staff at ivtech@ivstandards.com or call us at 1-800-569-6799 with your opinions. We'll then forward your comments to the appropriate representatives at NIST.

Your concerns, coupled with our own might demonstrate the value of these SRMs.