Cryptosporidium Proficiency Testing Program

 

The Cryptosporidium Proficiency Testing Program (PT) has been designed to provide water testing laboratories and accreditation agencies with a means of assessing a laboratory’s performance of U.S. EPA Method 1622/1623/1623.1 relative to other laboratories performing the method. The Program is accredited under ISO 17043 ” General Requirements for Proficiency Testing” by ANAB.

The organisms in this PT program include: Cryptosporidium parvum (Iowa isolate) and Giardia lamblia (H3 isolate). Participants will provide numerical data after seeding three PT samples into bulk reagent water samples and processing the samples according to either method 1622 or method 1623 for the recovery of Cryptosporidium, or Cryptosporidium and Giardia, respectively. Participants are not required to report recovery data for Giardia.

The PT Program is open to any laboratory interested in assessing their Cryptosporidium and Giardia testing performance. Only data from laboratories approved by a recognized accreditation or certification body are included in the overall recovery statistics; however, data from non-approved laboratories will be analyzed on an individual basis, and summary statistics describing their performance will be provided with their final report.

Contact Program staff at CryptoPT@slh.wisc.edu or 608-224-6260 for additional information.