Privacy

Lank CoreLab is an independent analytical laboratory at 7-14-7 Machiya, Arakawa City, Tokyo, founded by Alan Yardley. This policy describes the personal information that comes to us with a sample or an enquiry, how we use it, and your rights under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI).

A submission form gives us the submitter's name, organisation if any, email, phone and invoicing address, the address or location where the sample was taken, and the signatures on the chain-of-custody record. Enquiries through the site form give us a name, an email and the description you write.

A test result describes a sample, not a person. It becomes personal information when it is tied to an individual, for example the water from a private well at a named home address or the soil in a family garden. We treat such results with the same care as the identity details, and we do not publish or aggregate them in any form that could identify a client.

We use your details to accept and identify the sample, to keep the chain of custody unbroken, to run the analysis you ordered, to deliver the report, and to invoice. ISO/IEC 17025 obliges us to keep records that allow any result to be traced back to the original submission, which is why identity details are kept with the analytical record.

The site sets only a browser flag that remembers you dismissed the cookie notice. There is no analytics, advertising or social tracking, and the contact form is a plain email form that stores nothing on our server.

If a test outside our scope is subcontracted to another accredited laboratory, that lab receives the sample identifier and the analysis required, not your name, unless you ask us to pass it on. Auditors from the accreditation body may inspect submission records during an assessment under a confidentiality undertaking. Our accountant sees invoices. Nobody receives your details for marketing.

ISO/IEC 17025 requires analytical records to be retained; we keep submission forms, chain-of-custody records and reports for six years from the report date. Invoices are kept for seven years under tax law. Enquiries that do not become a submission are deleted after twelve months. Retained sample portions are disposed of thirty days after the report unless you arrange otherwise.

A report is released only to the person or organisation named on the submission form. We do not confirm to anyone else that you are a client. A result is disclosed to a regulator or court only when the law requires it, and we tell you when that happens unless the law forbids it.

You may ask to see the personal information we hold, to correct it, to stop a particular use, or to delete it. Email info@lank-corelab.com or call +81 3-6807-7785 and we will respond within two weeks after confirming your identity. Where a record must be kept for accreditation or tax reasons, we will explain which part remains and until when.

Submission records and reports are held in a system with role-based access and two-factor sign-in; only laboratory staff who need a record can open it. Paper chain-of-custody forms are scanned on receipt and stored in a locked cabinet. Reports are sent as password-protected PDFs on request.

This page is updated when our practices change and the date at the bottom moves. Clients with open submissions are told by email.

Lank CoreLab, 7-14-7 Machiya, Arakawa City, Tokyo 116-0001. Telephone +81 3-6807-7785. Email info@lank-corelab.com. Alan Yardley is the person responsible for personal information.