THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCREDITATION IN FORENSIC TOXICOLOGY

Abstract

Accreditation is a quality infrastructure established to reinforce reliability and validity of efforts exerted by conformity assessment organizations and their conformity confirmation documents issued as a result of such efforts (experiment and examination reports, calibration certificates, management system documents, product documents, staff documents etc.). Since accredited organizations are obliged to act in line with acknowledged standards, laboratories have to comply with current standards for tests and analyses. Activities undertaken in line with the standards enhance competitiveness in both domestic and international terms since they have to comply with conditions set out by such standards. They also lower costs and increase profitability. While businesses adopt TS EN ISO/IEC 9001, laboratories, on the other hand, opt for TS EN ISO/IEC 17025, an indicator of authorization to perform tests. This standard is divided into two main sections. First is the management conditions while second is technical features including physical conditions of laboratories and feasibility of methods TS EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard has been drawn up for laboratories to improve their management systems in quality, administrative and technical procedures. This standard safeguards the reliability of tests performed by forensic laboratories with such a standard, and the impartiality of expertise services and conformity with standards. This study offers an insight into requirements for TS EN ISO/IEC 17025, and advantages accorded to forensic laboratories that adopt this standard.