CEM Corporation

https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/spec_w/heavy_metals

In late 2019, there were media reports of baby foods having high levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. Since then, a congressional committee has been assembled to legislate acceptability criteria for toxic heavy metals in these products. The FDA’s Closer to Zero plan lays out steps to minimize exposure, which includes improving current methodology to meet action levels in the proposed Baby Food Safety Act. This webinar will give an update on the current method modifications the FDA is considering as well as highlight microwave digestion and inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICPMS) analysis techniques, used by the FDA, that can be implemented today in busy food testing labs.

Receive updates on FDA methodology for the testing of baby foods for heavy metals content according to proposed congressional limits

Learn how to perform microwave digestion of 40 baby food and food SRMs samples and blanks in a single batch

Learn how to best run your ICP-MS for food analysis, and how to have confidence in your data with our new software features


Metals analysis lab managers, chemists, and technicians involved in trace metals testing of foods

Lab managers and lab technicians looking to optimize heavy metals analysis of foods

Lab directors and commercial lab managers looking to increase throughput of food sample testing



Analytical Chemist
FDA Forensic Chemistry Center

In 2003, Dr. Kevin Kubachka received his B.S. degree in forensic chemistry from the Eastern Kentucky University. He then continued his education at the University of Cincinnati where he received his Ph.D. in chemistry (area of analytical chemistry) in 2007. Following graduate school, he was a federal post-doctoral researcher at the USEPA. After 16 months at the USEPA, he joined FDA’s Forensic Chemistry Center (FCC) as a chemist, where he has worked since September of 2008.

At the FCC, Dr. Kubachka has focused his efforts on elemental speciation and isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). His primary area of expertise is elemental analysis, with emphasis on elemental speciation of arsenic using liquid chromatography interfaced with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LC-ICP-MS). He has published several peer-reviewed journal articles and has given numerous invited presentations on these topics. Dr. Kubachka has been an instructor and course organizer for several FDA training courses.

Senior Applications Chemist
CEM Corporation

Elaine Hasty graduated Cum Laude from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. Her career began at Teledyne Allvac where she worked in the wet chemistry lab coordinating tests and reports for their superalloy manufacturing process. Elaine joined CEM in 1984 as an applications chemist for the Process Control division before moving to the newly formed Analytical division in 1986 where she helped pioneer microwave digestion and extraction techniques. She has worked closely with customers and analytical instrument manufactures as well as governing associations to develop formal methodology for the sample prep of everything from foods and feeds to environmental samples to geological samples and more.

Elaine is an active member of the AAPFCO Methods Forum Group and a Corporate Affiliate of AOAC International where she is regularly called on to provide expert opinion for development of methods. She has been published in numerous books, articles, and posters on the topics of microwave digestion and microwave extraction and is regarded by most as one of the world’s leading expert in microwave digestion.


Applications Scientist
Agilent Technologies

Jenny Nelson received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 2007, and her MBA from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2011. Currently, Jenny is an Applications Scientist for the Life Science and Chemical Analysis team at Agilent Technologies, joining in 2012 (with a step away in 2019). Jenny is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis, since 2013. Jenny has been very active with AOAC and ASTM over the past eight years, serving on expert review panels, chairing committees, and volunteering to develop new methods needed by the industry.

Jenny has extensive experience in operating and method development for Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS), Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES), Microwave Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (MP-AES). Jenny has broad knowledge and experience in different speciation analysis for many sample matrices using GC-ICPMS and LC-ICPMS. As well as vast experience with sp-ICP-MS for many applications.

Webcasts

Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 2pm EST | 11am PST | 7pm GMT | 8pm CET.
Learn how congress and the FDA are working together to set limits on heavy metal content in baby foods and how your lab can implement testing protocol with tips and tricks that will help improve analysis, speed sample prep, and reduce retesting.

Heavy Metals in Baby Food: Where Are We Now?

https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/spec_w/metal_food

Learn how to best run your ICP-MS for food analysis, and how to have confidence in your data with our new software features

Lab directors and commercial lab managers looking to increase throughput of food sample testing


Senior Applications Chemist
CEM Corporation

Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 11am EST | 8am PST | 5pm CET | 4pm GMT
Learn how congress and the FDA are working together to set limits on heavy metal content in baby foods and how your lab can implement testing protocol with tips and tricks that will help improve analysis, speed sample prep, and reduce retesting.

Heavy Metals in Baby Food – Where Are We Now?

Articles

Microwave Digestion of Large Mixed Food Samples with Varied Sample Weights

Digestion and Analysis of Large Baby Food Samples with Minimal Acid Volume

Application Note: Microwave Digestion and Trace Metals Analysis of Cannabis and Hemp Products 

Sample Preparation of Mixed Oils and Polymers in a Single Batch

http://www.spectroscopyonline.com/spec_w/AOAC

The legalization of hemp, medicinal cannabis, and recreational marijuana has driven demand for cannabis products worldwide. There is lack of federal regulations to ensure quality and safety of these products. Among these missing regulations are testing protocols for toxic heavy metals. In this webinar, an AOAC First Action Method will be reviewed and include preparation of multi-elemental analysis of plant material, cannabis containing foods, and cannabis containing personal care products. This method utilizes sample preparation by microwave digestion followed by analysis by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).

Understand current and proposed heavy metals limits in cannabis and cannabis containing products

Learn one high-throughput microwave digestion protocol for all cannabis samples

Implement multi-element analysis of a wide variety of samples utilizing ICP-MS

Metals analysis lab managers, chemists, and technicians involved in trace metals testing of cannabis

Lab managers and lab technicians looking to optimize heavy metals analysis of cannabis

Lab directors and commercial lab managers looking to increase throughput of cannabis sample testing

Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 2pm EDT | 1pm CDT | 11am PDT 

Learn about pending AOAC methodology for the determination of heavy metals content in cannabis and cannabis containing products utilizing high throughput microwave digestion and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). 



Heavy Metals in Cannabis: Efforts toward an official AOAC method

Microwave digestion of powdered materials, such as infant formula and dairy powders, have proven to be a difficult task. Powders are inherently non-homogenous and digesting a sample large enough to provide a homogeneous representative sample often leads to excessive venting and incomplete digestion. 

Reconstituting the powdered samples in water greatly improves their homogeneity and yields more consistent and complete digestions. This application note will describe the procedure of reconstitution and digestion of four food powder samples using the MARS 6 microwave digestion system.

	An estimated 1 million infants in the United States are fed formula from birth and, by the time they are three months old, about 2.7 million rely on formula for at least part of their nutrition. Accurate nutritional labeling of food products is a legal requirement in most countries to help consumers make informed healthy choices. This means all label claims need to be supported by accurate scientific measurements. For vulnerable groups such as babies and people requiring clinical nutrition products, infant formula nutrient analyses need to be very specific and able to accurately quantify even very low concentrations of heavy metals such as Pb, As, and Cd. In order to detect the low levels of heavy metal impurities obtaining a large representative sample is critical.

	This application note will focus on the preparation of powdered samples including infant formula, cheese powder, milk powder, and powdered butter. Samples will be reconstituted in warm water and an aliquot of each powder slurry will be prepared in the MARS 6 digestion system using the 75 mL MARSXpress vessel.

	A total of 40 samples were prepared using a CEM Corporation MARS 6 microwave digestion system equipped with iWave technology. iWave is a novel technology advancement that utilizes Light Emitting Technology™ to accurately measure the temperature of the actual sample solution inside the vessel and does not require an internal probe.

	Samples were prepared in CEM 75 mL MARSXpress vessels. This easy to use three-part vessel allows up to 40 samples to be prepared simultaneously and are sealed with a simple hand held torque device. Although the 75 mL MARSXpress vessels were used for the acid digestion for this study, the MARSXpress Plus vessel could be used as an alternative.


	Figure 1: iWave provides precise power control during run.

	In a 250 mL beaker with stir bar, 85 g of ASTM Type II or better water was added and heated to 60 °C on a hot plate. A 15 g powder sample was added and allowed to stir and heat for 10 min until all powder was well incorporated into the slurry. A thermometer was used to confirm the temperature of 60 °C ± 5 °C. A 7 g aliquot was weighed into a disposable pipette or syringe. Based upon a 15% (w/w) the slurry will yield a final sample size of about 1.05 g of powder.


	Figure 2: Samples after reconstitution.

	A 7 g aliquot of reconstituted sample was added to each MARSXpress liner along with 10 mL of concentrated HNO

. Nine vessels for each sample were prepared with the reconstituted sample. Eight of them were spiked with 1 mL of a 10 ppm spike containing Pb, As, and Cd. One vessel was an acid blank. The vessels were capped and placed in the MARS 6 for digestion. The One Touch Method Food was used. The One Touch Technology automatically recognized the vessel type and counted the number of vessels. It then chose the optimized conditions for the acid digestion. The maximum temperature achieved using this method is 200 °C. Food samples in general do not require extremely high temperatures to achieve complete digestion.


	Figure 3: Samples before and after digestion.

	The reconstitution step allows for a larger sampling of the powdered material yielding a more homogenous sample. The MARS 6 with 75 mL MARSXpress vessels and iWave Temperature Control simultaneously digested the four different powder samples in a single batch offering a sufficient digestion solution for high throughput food testing labs. For each sample one blank, one unspiked sample, and 8 samples spiked with Cd, Pb, and As were digested in a single run for a total of 40 samples. Figure 1 illustrates the system automatically adjusts the power to compensate for the varied sample types. The before and after samples shown in Figure 3 demonstrate clear and particulate free digestions.


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