Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Abstract

Development of Certified Reference Materials of Drug Abuse (Heroin, Etc)for Elimination of Measurement Error in Forensic Drugs

Fuhai Su, Xinhua Dai and Hongmei Li

The need for certified reference materials (CRM) of illicit drug was emphasized by drug detection in the forensic science as a tool to improve comparability, ensuring accuracy and traceability of analytical results. The production, characterization and certification of reference materials (RMs) is a key activity in improving and maintaining a worldwide coherent system of measurements. For the first time, we developed 9 illicit drug CRMs, including methamphetamine, heroin, ketamine and others. This work describes the production of the series of illicit drug CRMs, according to ISO Guides 34 and 35, which comprises the material processing, homogeneity and stability assessment, CRMs’ characterization including moisture content, trace metal content. The certified values were assigned by two methods. Homogeneity of the CRMs was determined by an in-house validated liquid chromatographic methodology. Potential degradation during storage was also investigated and a shelf-life based on this value was established. The certified values for all the studied reference materials are traceable to the international system of units (SI). The application of purity CRMs with accurate value could eliminated the measurement error in the forensic labs, which could give the accurate and reliable results for the forensic evidence. NIM will continue to carry out in-depth cooperation with IFS with raising the level of science to provide a greater level of rigor and confidence in forensic evidence used in the Chinese criminal justice system. Ketamine and methamphetamine have been applied as CRM in the APMP comparison, and gave the good results (Lab(7)). These CRMs studied have been widely used as standards in routine inspection work for the labs affiliated Institute of Forensic Science. The application of purity CRMs with accurate value could eliminated the measurement error in the forensic labs, which could give the accurate and reliable results for the forensic evidence.