The Column-09-09-2015

Click the title above to open The Column September 09, 2015 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 11, Number 16, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column September 09, 2015 North American issue, Volume 11, Number 16, in an interactive PDF format.

Marine polychaetes are a common type of annelid worm widely spread in marine environments. Raquel Fernandez from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, spoke to Aladair Matheson of The Column about her innovative approach to developing an untargeted method to monitor polychaetes and assess their potential use in environmental monitoring of oil spills.

Researchers have published a new approach to heparin screening that allows the detection of adulteration within one hour. Published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the study presents a screening strategy using hydrogen peroxide digestion followed by fast reversed-phase ion pairing liquid chromatography (reversed-phase IP–LC) coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (MS–MS) to detect contamination of heparin samples.

This article shows the potential of IC–ICP–MS for monitoring iodine-containing ionic oxidation by-products that form during ozonation of iodinated X-ray contrast media.

Researchers from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan have been investigating melamine and have shown that melamine tableware is a potential source of melamine exposure and that workers in a melamine tableware factory are subsequently at a higher risk of renal injury associated with ambient melamine exposure.

This article shows the potential of IC–ICP–MS for monitoring iodine-containing ionic oxidation by-products that form during ozonation of iodinated X-ray contrast media.