The Chemical Investigation Programme 2 (CIP2) is a project being undertaken by the Water companies who have waste obligations on behalf of the United Kingdom Water Industry Research (UKWIR) as part of the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) under framework 2000/60/EC. 

To help the Utility sector deliver a successful CIP2 programme, ALS Environmental have invested heavily in new analytical instruments, methods and validation protocols to allow us to offer the full portfolio of analysis under the CIP2 banner from our waste water centre of excellence in Coventry, West Midlands. The investment has seen several new Agilent Gas Chromatography with double Mass Spectrometers (GC-MSMS), Agilent Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometers (ICP-MS) and PSA Atomic Fluorescence for low level Mercury analysis, being installed, validated and accredited for use on the CIP2 programme.

The required Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) levels requested in CIP2 offered some interesting challenges to current methods, such as Reactive Aluminium and Ammoniacal Nitrogen. But our dedicated project and analytical teams have successfully overcome these challenges and produced methods which are fit for purpose. In some cases ALS Environmental have been able to offer a limit of reporting that is 10 times lower than the EQS, such as for the "Priority Substances", whereas the reporting limits for some Pharmaceuticals are hundreds of times lower than the EQS limits.

Upon the latest investments and developments for the CIP2 programme, Lisa Clarke, Operations Director at ALS Environmental, comments:

The planning and development required to meet the challenging EQS limits assigned to the CIP2 programme has required some large scale investment in both instruments and experts by ALS Environmental. 

The technical team behind the CIP2 project have been asked to deliver some ultra low limits of detection, some of which are 10 times lower than the original CIP programme data. We are particularly proud of the developments with Cypermethrin, PFOS and PFOA which we will have further details on shortly.

CIP2 is an ambitious programme of sampling and analysis to be undertaken over a 5 year period, due to be completed and reported by 2020. Should you have any questions on CIP2 or the developments being undertaken by ALS Environmental please ask your Customer Service Co-ordinator or contact us on 02476 42 12 13.