Mycotoxin contamination of food and feedstuffs is among the top priorities for human and animal safety. The currently used techniques for mycotoxin determination, either chromatography or ELISA, are unsuitable for routine in-field assessment. There is an urgent need for other accurate, simple and cost-effective techniques that can be used as a screening tool for a rapid estimation of mycotoxin ...

Successful food-safety management relies on a clear identification of the hazards to be addressed. In the case of issues relating to food allergens the hazard may be defined as: The inadvertant consumption of a food allergen by a sensitive individual. Ensuring that the risk (probability) of this hazard occuring is maintained at an appropriately low level within the context of modern food-manufa...

A method is described for direct analysis of lead in blood utilizing the carbon rod atomizer. Aliquots of whole blood are analyzed without pre-treatment. Resuits are comparable to those for a similar non-flame technique in which whole blood samples were prediluted with “Triton X-100.” The small sample volumes required and the minimal sample preparation further diminish the possibility of spurio...

Microarray technology changed the landscape of contemporary life sciences by providing vast amounts of expression data. Researchers are building up repositories of experiment results with various conditions and samples which serve the scientific community as a precious resource. Ensuring that the sample is of high quality is of utmost importance to this effort. The task is complicated by the fa...

abstract background: leachate produced by waste disposal sites can be contaminating groundwater. the contamination vulnerability and groundwater protection assessment has proved to be an effective tool for the delineation of protection zones in area affected by groundwater contamination. the main objective of the study is to evaluate aquifer pollution vulnerability in the new waste disposal sit...

OBJECTIVES Blood culture contamination is a common problem in the emergency department (ED) that leads to unnecessary patient morbidity and health care costs. The study objective was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a quality improvement (QI) intervention for reducing blood culture contamination in an ED. METHODS The authors developed a QI intervention to reduce blood culture cont...

The requirements for minimising microbial contamination in pharmaceutical cleanrooms are outlined in regulatory documents published by authorities that include the European Commission1 and the Food and Drug Administration in the USA2. These authorities also suggest the use of risk management and assessment techniques to identify and control sources of microbial contamination3,4. Risk assessment...

Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, newcastle.edu.au CRC for Contamination Assessment and Rem Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia Global Centre for Environmental Remedia Technology, The University of Newcastle, Ca Institute of Environmental and Sustaina Braunschweig, Hagenring 30, 38106 Brauns Australian National Fabrication Facility, A Canberra, Austra...

As a result of the continuous urbanization and industrialization in China over the last few decades, heavy metals have been continuously emitted into urban environments and now pose serious threats to human health. In the present study, an extensive urban near-surface dust survey was conducted in Changchun, China, to evaluate the current status of heavy metal contamination in urban dust and to ...