Results of a European interlaboratory comparison on gross alpha/beta activity determination in drinking water

The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract An interlaboratory comparison was organised by JRC-IRMM among environmental radioactivity moni-toring laboratories for the determination of gross alpha/beta activity concentration in drinking water. Independent standard methods were used for the reference value determination. The performance of participating laborato-ries was evaluated with respect to the reference values using relative deviations. Sample preparation and mea-surement methods used by the participating laboratories are detailed, in particular in the view of method-dependency of the results. Many of the participants ’ results deviate by more than two orders of magnitude from the reference values regardless of the techniques used. This suggests that gross methods need revision