This year's National Environmental Monitoring Conference (NEMC) was held for the first time in conjunction with The NELAC Institute (TNI) meeting, forming a single new meeting called the National Environmental Measurement Symposium. The conference was attended by around 450 delegates from both government and contract laboratories, as well as delegates from the auditing community.

Thermo Fisher Scientific were present once again, with a booth at the exhibition and giving several technical presentations and posters. For trace element analysis, an oral presentation on the use of a single mode collision/reaction cell approach for rapid, interference-free environmental analysis by ICP-MS was given by Bill Spence. A written paper on this will shortly be available on the NEMC website under 2007 Proceedings. A poster on chromium speciation by HPLC-ICP-MS was also presented. E-mail erc.cambridge@thermofisher.com for a PDF copy of this.

Thermo Fisher Scientific also ran two lunch and lear sessions - one on GC and GC-MS and the other on ICP and ICP-MS.

Keep an eye on the ERC for details of activities at NEMC in 2008. The 2008 meeting will be held in Washington DC in August.