Certification of acrylamide in toasted bread : certified reference materials ERM-BD273

This report describes in detail the production of a reference material certified for its acrylamide content (ERM-BD273), from the processing to the value assignment, going through all the required steps that assure the high quality of the final product, such as the homogeneity and stability studies. The matrix material, toasted bread powder of particle size smaller than 500 μm, is stored in amber glass bottles under inert atmosphere containing 30 g of the powder and kept at a temperature of -20 ºC. Studies performed at IRMM confirmed homogeneity and stability of acrylamide in toasted bread under the evaluated conditions. The characterisation of the material, organised and coordinated by IRMM, was done by an interlaboratory comparison. The certified value was obtained as the unweighted mean of the laboratory means of the eleven accepted sets of results, and the expanded uncertainty associated (k=2) includes contributions from the characterisation, the homogeneity and the stability. The value certified for the acrylamide mass fraction in ERM-BD273, is 425 ± 29 ng/g of toasted bread.