‘Beef snow,’ sludge, and seafood fraud: How NIST standardizes everything from $1,143 peanut butter to house dust to keep us safe

Standard reference materials — or SRMs — at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) serve as standards for many food, beverage, health, industrial and other products. There are over a thousand SRMs including peanut butter, house dust, dry cat food, soy milk, blueberries, stainless steel, fertilizer, and a DNA profiling standard. SRMs help make products safer and ensure that consumers are getting what they think they’re getting. But how do they work exactly?

In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki cover SRMs that are helping us accurately detect toxic substances like lead and pesticides in our house dust, fight seafood fraud, and keep PFAS out of our meat. Sam also travels to the NIST headquarters outside of Washington, DC to get a behind the scenes tour of how SRMs are made. She even gets a chance to snoop around the warehouse where SRMs are stored.

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Tiny Matters has a YouTube channel! Full-length audio episodes can be found here. And to see video of Sam, Deboki, and episode guests, check out Tiny Matters YouTube shorts here. A video showing 'beef snow' and a bunch of other SRMs is here.

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