UNBC’s Northern Analytical Lab Services (NALS) can now provide reliable water, soil, and air test results for both UNBC researchers and external stakeholders.
This comes as the Service recently received the ISO/IEC 17025 International standard for testing and calibration laboratories, meaning they now meet the international standards for testing labs.
Dr. Hossein Kazemian, head of NALS at UNBC says this will create a lot of new opportunities for the program.
“This accreditation will open up a lot of doors for us for research partnerships and industry who need those types of services,” Kazemian explained. “Many of our research partners want to have research and tests done at an accredited lab and we can now serve our local communities with their testing needs, as part of our mandate as a community service provider in northern B.C.”
The accreditation process was launched in November 2019, and was supported with $30,000 from the Northern Development Initiative Trust.
Ongoing research on workplace air quality is conducted by the NALS research team, as part of a partnership with WorkSafeBC.
As a result of this partnership, NALS has established the only research and development facility that has an industrial hygiene program in the region.
Prior to NALS accreditation approval from Standards Council Canada, Kazemian says some clients had to go outside of Canada for particulate testing but now NALS is certified to do it.
“Our aim is not to compete with any commercial lab,” Kazemian says. “But as a full-service equipment lab, we are trying to help provide services that are not accessible to communities in the northern B.C. region.”
UNBC has been working to build up a team of highly qualified personnel of current and former students to conduct work in the lab over the last five years.
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