World-first Accreditation Enables Leap Forward in Environmental Testing

Linde Gas (Germany) has been recently awarded ISO17025 accreditation for its specialty gases mixtures used for environmental testing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). While many liquid VOC standards have been previously certified, this is the first time any industrial gases company has achieved such validation for VOC mixtures in a gaseous state, and in so doing Linde has enabled a significant leap forward in legal metrology.

VOCs are insidious and highly noxious chemicals that exist within the ambient air – both in the outdoor environment and within buildings. Many are carcinogenic in nature and are directly attributable to serious human health problems, including diseases of the respiratory tract, even when exposure is limited to very low levels.

With ever increasing environmental testing around the world, a growing number of federal and state agencies require that the environmental sample they are testing can be accurately and assuredly compared to a guaranteed, “known” sample. Through years of technical innovation and advanced analytical and blending methods Linde has become the first to develop traceability procedures to prove 1ppm of benzene – or indeed any other VOC - and guarantee a previously unattained level of precision.