Contaminants of Emerging Concern in Drinking Water: An HTC-18 Interview with Leon Barron
At HTC-18 in Leuven, Executive Editor of LCGC International, Alasdair Matheson, spoke to Leon Barron from Imperial College London about his innovative research focusing on modern chromatographic techniques for analyzing contaminants of emerging concern in drinking water.
Dr. Leon Barron leads the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team within the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London. His research focuses on the sources, risks, threats, and impacts of toxic chemical mixtures on environmental and public health. In particular, his analytical work focusses on rapid method development using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) and gas chromatography–MS (GC–MS) for large-scale application to contaminants of emerging concern, including pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, pesticides, persistent organic chemicals (including PFAS), among others, in air, water, soil and biota. He has particular expertise in water profiling, including large-scale identification and monitoring of wastewater for community health markers in near real time and identifying sources of chemical pollution in the environment. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences and the Higher Education Academy. Among several committee positions held, he was elected to the RSC Analytical Science Community Council in 2019 to promote the chemical sciences in environmental pollution and health fields.
In the below video interview, Leon discusses the following topics:
- You recently published a paper on enhanced selectivity for acidic contaminants in drinking water. What was the rationale behind this project?
- What types of analytes are you analyzing and what were the problems you encountered using previous techniques?
- What type of instrumental analysis did you do on the extracts?
- What were your main findings?
- What other projects have you been involved in related to drinking water?
- Can you summarize your research from an analytical and public health perspective?
Analytical Challenges in Measuring Migration from Food Contact Materials
November 2nd 2015Food contact materials contain low molecular weight additives and processing aids which can migrate into foods leading to trace levels of contamination. Food safety is ensured through regulations, comprising compositional controls and migration limits, which present a significant analytical challenge to the food industry to ensure compliance and demonstrate due diligence. Of the various analytical approaches, LC-MS/MS has proved to be an essential tool in monitoring migration of target compounds into foods, and more sophisticated approaches such as LC-high resolution MS (Orbitrap) are being increasingly used for untargeted analysis to monitor non-intentionally added substances. This podcast will provide an overview to this area, illustrated with various applications showing current approaches being employed.
Using Chromatography to Study Microplastics in Food: An Interview with Jose Bernal
December 16th 2024LCGC International sat down with Jose Bernal to discuss his latest research in using pyrolysis gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (Py-GC–MS) and other chromatographic techniques in studying microplastics in food analysis.
The Use of SPME and GC×GC in Food Analysis: An Interview with Giorgia Purcaro
December 16th 2024LCGC International sat down with Giorgia Purcaro of the University of Liege to discuss the impact that solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and comprehensive multidimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) is having on food analysis.
