Revised guidance and transition process for Asbestos Test Laboratories webinar

The Health and Safety Executive will imminently publish revisions to its Guidance document, HSG 248 The Analysts’ Guide.

In preparation, HSE would like to promote and relay the importance of the revised Guidance in support of its implementation. Further, given the inextricable link between Regulation and Accreditation in asbestos testing, UKAS would like to clarify the process of how changes to existing test and sampling methodologies will need to be demonstrated by Laboratories, in order to ensure the continuity of their accreditation.

On Monday 17th May, UKAS and HSE hosted a webinar to provide detail of the transition process for laboratories that are currently accredited for:

• Sampling of air for fibre counting
• Fibre counting (PLM/PCM)
• Fibre counting (air and/or bulk) and identification (SEM/TEM)
• 4 Stage Clearance Process
• ​​Identification of asbestos in bulk materials
• ​​​​​Sampling of bulk materials for asbestos identification
• Asbestos in soils – primarily identification, but also of interest to those laboratories that retain accreditation for quantification purposes.

Please feel free to share this email with any colleagues that could not attend the webinar. Questions and Answers from the webinar are available here.

The webinar highlighted a number of technical queries. HSE continue to review these as part of  preparation for the publication of the printed version of HSG248. Where appropriate modifications and corrections are being made to the document. HSE’s priority is therefore to focus on the hard copy  publication, which is due before August. The online version will also be updated. All technical queries will be considered during this process. However, there may be some for which specific replies are needed, these will be provided via UKAS in due course where they were collected by us.

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