What is "accreditation"�?

Nowadays, every EU-citizen is able to obtain goods and services from any part of the world. Regarding this, the European Union and its member states are responsible for quality control and product safety to protect their citizens.

Consumer protection is an important goal of the EU and, therefore, controls are carried out by state or authorized conformity assessment bodies (laboratories, inspection and certification bodies). The Institute for Hygiene and Public Health, an accredited laboratory, is one of these conformity assessment bodies. It is an authorized body for the investigation of water and disinfectants. Accreditation bodies independently control if the institute reliably and competently works according to internationally applicable standards.

Our accreditation body for water is the AKS Hanover (www.aks-hannover.de). We are accredited by the ZLG for disinfectants (www.zlg.nrw.de). The accreditation scope of our institute is described in the accreditation certificate documents. The accreditation scope of our institute is described in the accreditation certificate documents.

An accreditation is only valid for a time period of five years and must be redone (reaccredidation). The reason for this is to achieve constant improvement, which is a basic element of quality management. An intensive surveillance by the accreditation body also takes place within the 5 years time period.

According to the drinking water regulation (TrinkwV 2001) an accreditation is the requirement for water investigations. All authorized laboratories are published on the website of the LÖGD, the responsible authorization body for North Rhine Westphalia (www.loegd.nrw.de).