Recently, one of my colleagues from the UK emailed a link to a resource that should be helpful to chromatographers, both new to chromatography and experienced in chromatography: Guide to Sample Preparation (link to registration page to order the poster; a hard copy of the poster will be mailed to you. You can also click the image and it will take you to the registration page.). You can hang this complementary poster in your lab or office for quick and handy references on how to deal with samples.

Part 1 of this blog post, LC-MS Hormones Detection Application Kit as per EPA Method 539 (1), presented two tools (kit and webinar) to address the challenges of detecting hormones in drinking water.

Did you know that low doses of pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones among others have been found increasingly in environmental and drinking waters? As per the Utah State University site, pharmaceuticals have been found in at least 41 million of America's drinking water supplies. Last year, due to increasing concerns over the long-term health impacts to humans and aquatic species, the World Health Organization published a 52-page report titled, Pharmaceuticals in drinking water (downloadable PDF).

Stories on the detection of the veterinary anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone in horse meat in Europe (link to news story) surfaced a few weeks ago, and I am sure those working in the field of food testing have been following what the food safety regulatory bodies in Europe will do very closely.

“Just one more turn.” This has been the chromatographer's answer to the question of how tightly to seal their chromatography vial using a screw-thread closure.

Readers of this blog might remember a blog post last year that discussed HPLC and Ion Chromatography analysis of melamine in milk and pet food last year using UV detection, and when I received notice of this fast LC-MS method, I thought it would round off our melamine analytical solutions nicely with three different techniques!

Red wine has been in the news in the last few weeks with two fairly disparate studies, both of which I found fascinating. In the first study, researchers from the Kingston University in London warned that red wine could mask testosterone levels thus mask doping by athletes (link to story) and in the second study, again from the UK, but this time from the University of Leeds, researchers found that extracts from green tea and red wine disrupted Alzheimer disease pathways (link to story).

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.

Here are three more bio-analysis application notes to continue the series on bio-analysis and our new fritless Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) cartridges and plates. By the way, if this is the first time you are visiting this blog, this series began because a recently presented bio-analysis webinar is now on-demand: Addressing the Needs of Bio-analysis with New SPE Technologies – SOLA (it requires you to fill out a short form prior to viewing the webinar).

Earlier this year, we released new fritless Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) cartridges and plates, and then more recently, we presented a highly popular webinar with Separation Science on using these SPE cartridges in bio-analysis research. (Isn't the background of the image amazing?)