Title: accreditation of a laboratory
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - accreditation of a laboratory
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.08054
Status: current

Definition
Third-party attestation related to a laboratory conveying formal demonstration of its competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.

Notes
1) Examples of conformity assessment tasks for which accreditation can be granted are measurement, testing, inspection, provision of proficiency testing schemes, and production of reference materials.
2) The criteria for determining a laboratory's competence are based on relevant international standards, for example, ISO/IEC 17025, ISO 15189, or ISO 15195, and include adequate quality assurance and quality control procedures, such as qualifications, training and experience of staff, appropriate equipment that is properly calibrated and maintained, use of validated measurement procedures, participation in interlaboratory comparisons, and appropriate sampling practices.

Example
Accreditation of an analytical chemistry laboratory to ISO/IEC 17025 for the measurement of the mass concentration of lead in environmental samples.

Related Terms
- analytical chemistry: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08003
- competence: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08065
- conformity assessment: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08067
- inspection: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08080
- interlaboratory comparisons: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08081
- measurement procedures: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08028
- proficiency testing schemes: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08104
- testing: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08049

Source
- PAC, 2021, 93, 997. 'Metrological and quality concepts in analytical chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 2021)' on page 1019 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2019-0819)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08054/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08054/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08054/xml

Citation: Citation: 'accreditation of a laboratory' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08054
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
Collection: If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org .
Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-06-28T15:07:41+00:00