Oil spill response
Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced that its global Food Safety Response Centre in Dreieich, Germany, has developed two new analytical screening methods in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced that its global Food Safety Response Centre in Dreieich, Germany, has developed two new analytical screening methods in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil samples collected from the Gulf region were used to develop the step-by-step testing procedures for detecting petroleum contamination in oysters and fish, specifically hydrocarbons and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
“We created our global Food Safety Response Centre to help our laboratory customers around the world quickly mobilize during a food contamination crisis,” said Marc N. Casper, the company’s president and CEO. “The incident in the Gulf is a clear example of the type of threat the centre can address.” The centre was opened earlier this year and is reported to be equipped with the company’s latest equipment including liquid and gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
According to Casper, “Our new methods for detecting petroleum in oysters and fish were designed to significantly reduce analysis time and enable our customers to meet the demand for rapid and reliable testing of seafood from the Gulf for the foreseeable future.”
To download the methods visit www.thermofisher.com
This story originally appeared in The Column. Click here to view that issue.
Inside the Laboratory: The Richardson Group at the University of South Carolina
November 20th 2024In this edition of “Inside the Laboratory,” Susan Richardson of the University of South Carolina discusses her laboratory’s work with using electron ionization and chemical ionization with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to detect DBPs in complex environmental matrices, and how her work advances environmental analysis.
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.
RAFA 2024 Highlights: Contemporary Food Contamination Analysis Using Chromatography
November 18th 2024A series of lectures focusing on emerging analytical techniques used to analyse food contamination took place on Wednesday 6 November 2024 at RAFA 2024 in Prague, Czech Republic. The session included new approaches for analysing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), polychlorinated alkanes (PCAS), Mineral Oil Hydrocarbons (MOH), and short- and medium-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs and MCCPs).
Profiling Volatile Organic Compounds in Whisky with GC×GC–MS
November 1st 2024Researchers from Austria, Greece, and Italy conducted a study to analyze volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in Irish and Scotch whiskys using solid-phase microextraction (SPME) Arrow with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC×GC–MS) to examine the organoleptic characteristics that influence the taste of spirits.
