In the fascinating environmental pesticides study featured in this blog post, researchers studied a well-preserved deposit of guano (which included egested insect remains) in the province of Ontario in Canada to determine if and how the diets of insectivorous birds, in this particular case, chimney swifts had changed with the application of pesticides, and, in particular, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) over a period of 48 years.

Continuing the FAQ questions from the previous post: GC-MS/MS Multi-Residue Pesticides Analysis FAQ (1). (Do visit the post for details on the on-demand webinar and other resources.

Last month, we hosted a very popular webinar, titled, Implement High Quality, Routine GC-MS/MS Multi-Residue Pesticides Analysis with ease, (link to on-demand registration page) and the viewers had many questions about the GC-MS/MS solution discussed in the webinar, and why the GC-MS/MS method is one of the fastest growing techniques in routine pesticides testing.

Around eight years ago, I was an applications chemist, and I would demonstrate GC triple quadrupole mass spectrometers. At that time, even though that it wasn't too long ago, the technique was still considered as high-end or research for many labs. I was developing methods weekly and was lucky to see many of the different and interesting applications of the technology. That said, the task of developing an extensive multi-residue pesticide method in a short space of time was always laborious and challenging. This was, of course, (as Murphy's Law would indicate) the most popular request.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that alter the human and animal endocrine system resulting in adverse health impacts and include pesticides such as desethyl atrazine, herbicides simazine and diuron, and the chemical bisphenol A used in the production of plastics and resins. Regulatory bodies around the world are regulating these chemicals in the enivornment particular water supplies for drinking. (All links go to regulatory body webpages.)

Phenylurea compounds are widely used as agricultural pesticides and due to their slow degradation, they are frequently detected in surface waters at concentrations above 0.1 μg/L, which is higher than the European Commission’s drinking water limit often used as a quality standard for natural water.

Recently, a reverse-phase HPLC genetic study on identifying the alleles (one or more forms of a gene) that could be responsible for insecticide resistance in the malaria-causing mosquito Anopheles funestus came across my desk, and it was fascinating enough to merit a blog post.

Wishing our blog readers a very Happy Holiday break! As some of our blog readers may be aware, we hosted a series of four webinars on our newly released High-Pressure Ion Chromatography (HPIC) technique this year. The  webinars have been extremely popular with analytical chemists, and I thought the holiday break would be a great time for those who had missed the webinars to view them at leisure!

Earlier this month, our sample preparation experts presented a well-attended webinar titled: Increase Productivity with Automated Sample Preparation, (link to webinar now available on-demand after a brief registration) and I thought I would share the questions asked at the webinar plus some useful links to documents referred to in the answers.

I just received my copy of our free Separated by Experience enewsletter (link to subscription form) and saw this great article on how to select the latest and best ion chromatography (IC) analytical column for your application and thought it would be a great help to our customers!