Scan this QR code on your phone to get bonus info on why not all labs are accredited

As we recently dis­cussed in our series about ISO 17025 “Why is ISO 17025 so impor­tant to us in foren­sic sci­ence?”:

While accred­i­ta­tion does not equate to auto­matic qual­ity in results, it means that a lab adheres to some sort of exter­nal Qual­ity Man­age­ment Sys­tem (QMS).  How worth­while that QMS is ver­sus what is nec­es­sary in the gen­eral sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to insure true results is debat­able. Just deter­min­ing whether or not a lab is accred­ited and by whom is the very begin­ning of assess­ing qual­ity of the reported and alleged test result. It should be remem­bered that these stan­dards are min­i­mum expres­sions of accept­able prac­tices.  A lab­o­ra­tory could and should decide to employ greater stan­dards than the min­i­mum to insure qual­ity of the results issued.

Sur­pris­ing to most peo­ple is that a crime lab that pro­vides results does not need to be accredited.

That’s right. They don’t.

Some of the test­ing at the SBI was not accredited

In addi­tion stat­ing that a lab is accred­ited does not mean that all of the test­ing per­formed in a lab is accredited.

HOW TO FIND OUT IF YOUR LAB IS ACCREDITED

If you would like to find out if a lab­o­ra­tory (or a lab­o­ra­tory sys­tem) is ISO/IEC 17025:2005 (Inter­na­tional) accred­ited, you can look on the ASCLD/LAB web­site which has recently been updated a few months ago or so.
http://www.ascld-lab.org/labstatus/accreditedlabs.html#va

If you click select the head­ing in the right side col­umn under “TYPE OF ACCREDITATION” (e.g., “Inter­na­tional Cal­i­bra­tion” or “Inter­na­tional Test­ing” next to each of the lab­o­ra­to­ries within a sys­tem, a descrip­tive win­dow will open which con­tains a link to an accred­i­ta­tion “scope” pdf doc­u­ment (notice “Field of Accred­i­ta­tion Dis­ci­pline 2.0″ and “Cat­e­gories of Test­ing 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3″).

Also, for lab­o­ra­to­ries (or lab sys­tems) that are accred­ited by Foren­sic Qual­ity Services-International or “FQS-I”, their web­site offers a sim­i­lar “Accred­ited Labs” search option as well:

http://www.forquality.org/Accredited_Labs.html

An ISO 17025 “foren­sic exam­i­na­tion accred­i­ta­tion pro­gram” through A2LA can be found here:

http://www.a2la.org/appsweb/forensics.cfm

Of course, any­one who has worked for a post­mortem foren­sic tox­i­col­ogy lab­o­ra­tory, is already famil­iar with the ABFT list­ing of accred­ited laboratories.

http://www.abft.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=64

There is also the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Med­ical Examiners:

http://thename.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=69

The National Insti­tute of Stan­dard and Tech­nol­ogy (NIST) also main­tains a list of NVLAP Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Pro­grams (LAPs):

http://ts.nist.gov/standards/scopes/programs.htm

There are sev­eral pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies in addi­tion to the above that accredit laboratories:

Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Bureau (L-A-B) (offers ISO 17205 based accred­i­ta­tion via ISO 17011): http://www.l-a-b.com/content/search-l-a-b-accredited-laboratories

CLINICAL AREA

In the clin­i­cal arena (as some­times unfor­tu­nately clin­i­cal test are admit­ted into court), there is Col­lege of Amer­i­can Pathol­o­gists (CAP)

http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=accrlabsearch_page

Within CAP, there is their own ver­sion of ISO based form of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion enti­tled “CAP 15189^SM Accred­ited Labs”

http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&cntvwrPtlt_actionOverride=%2Fportlets%2FcontentViewer%2Fshow&_windowLabel=cntvwrPtlt&cntvwrPtlt{actionForm.contentReference}=laboratory_accreditation%2F15189%2Faccredited_labs.html&_state=maximized&_pageLabel=cntvwr

There are also lab­o­ra­to­ries that oper­ate under the Clin­i­cal Lab­o­ra­tory Improve­ment Act (CLIA):

https://www.cms.gov/CLIA/20_CLIA_Laboratory_Demographic_Information.asp#TopOfPage

Infor­ma­tion about COLA Accred­i­ta­tion can be found here:

http://www.cola.org/whycola.html

Infor­ma­tion about Joint Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion of Health­care Orga­ni­za­tions can be found here:

http://www.jointcommission.org/accreditation/hospital_seeking_accreditation.aspx

Your own state may main­tain some sort of accred­i­ta­tion or exter­nal pro­fi­ciency test­ing mech­a­nism as well.

In addi­tion some sub-disciplines main­tain their own brand of accred­i­ta­tion through their organizations.