Canadian Reference Materials

The NRC Certified Reference Materials program is operated by the Measurement Science and Standards portfolio and provides CRMs for environmental, biotoxin, food, nutritional supplement, and stable isotope analysis.

With the exception of the ORMS, the river water CRM with elevated mercury, all materials contain natural levels of analytes in their native matrix.

In 1977, Edmonds et al. reported the identification, isolation, and synthesis of major arsenic-containing substance in sea organisms, the arsenobetaine.

Before DORM-2, DORM-1 (issued in 1986) served as the reference material for which the concentration of arsenobetaine was widely reported in scientific literature.

[4] Besides arsenobetaine, NRC currently offers matrix reference materials certified for methylmercury (TORT-3), dibutyltin, and tributyltin (PACS-3).

Since 2011, the reference material for the isotopic composition of natural mercury, NIMS-1, is basis for the standard atomic weight of mercury [ 2 ]
NRC's domoic acid standard was the first biotoxin reference material in the world