A journey towards whole water certified reference materials for organic substances: measuring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as required by the European Union Water Framework Directive

In 2000, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) came into force in the European Union with the aim of protecting and improving water quality. The priority substances established to be monitored are predominantly organic compounds, for which the WFD sets the requirement of ‘whole water sample’ analysis. This legislative requirement poses analytical challenges for the monitoring laboratories as well as technical challenges for reference materials producers. In the past, there were attempts to produce reference materials as quality assurance/quality control tools for measuring organic priority substances in whole water. A critical reflection on the approaches and solutions applied to prepare such kind of matrix reference materials is presented along with a discussion on the difficulties encountered by the analytical laboratories in analysing such complex matrices. The Certified Reference Material (CRM) ERM-CA100 can be considered as a pioneer for a ‘whole water’ CRM (containing humic acids) and has been designed for the analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Further developments seem to be necessary to upgrade the design towards a CRM which will also include suspended particulate matter, another basic constituent of natural surface water samples. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00216-021-03200-2. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00216-021-03200-2.