About

The Best Practices (originally Benchmarking and Publications) for Non-Targeted Analysis (BP4NTA) working group was established to address challenges in non-targeted analysis (NTA) studies using mass spectrometry.

Although the research community has embraced NTA for exploring complex samples and identifying novel contaminants, foundational knowledge gaps persist. Universal terminology, a shared understanding of key concepts, and cohesive expectations for reporting methods and results are essential for accurate communication of results, but are still elusive in this emerging field.

Since the initial formation, BP4NTA has grown tremendously and accomplished much. Currently, there are approximately 173 members (and growing!) representing government, industry, and academia.

If you’d like to contact BP4NTA, please visit our contact page. If you have interest in joining the BP4NTA community, fill out our membership form.

History

EPA’s Non-Targeted Collaborative Trial (ENTACT) was conceived to address these challenges. The ENTACT trial was an interlaboratory comparison of nontargeted analytical methods with nearly 30 participants. You can read more about ENTACT here.

In August 2018, the US EPA held a workshop with ENTACT participants (and other NTA practitioners) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. During the workshop, smaller discussion groups were formed with specific topics of interest.

A strong sentiment emerged among two of the groups that ultimately agreed that:

• Shared terms and definitions can lead to better comparison of methods and results.
• We can determine benchmark performance once methods and results reporting are more harmonized.
• Once benchmarks are set, we can then tackle concepts like “proficiency testing” for NTA measurements.

There was a clear need to continue discussion and advancement of these concepts beyond the 2018 workshop so future online meetings were planned.

And thus, BP4NTA was born under the leadership of Benjamin Place (NIST) and Elin Ulrich (EPA).