NIST issues human milk and blood serum SRMs for contaminant measurements

07-03-2009: Responding to scientists' need to measure organic contaminants in human body fluids, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently made four new Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) available for purchase. Developed in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the human milk and serum SRMs have certified levels of contaminants, including flame retardants and pesticides, commonly found in the U.S. population. Scientists at the CDC and other laboratories will use the SRMs as controls in their experiments to ensure their methods are providing trustworthy results.

To prepare these SRMs, scientists collected 200 liters of blood serum and 100 liters of milk from banks across the United States and divided the sample pools in half. Researchers packaged half of each material as received, containing the natural (unfortified) level of contaminants, and treated (fortified) the other halves with a solution containing 172 selected contaminants. The fortified samples contain a concentration of those contaminants at levels five to 10 times higher than the median concentrations found in the U.S. population.