This review presents the different mycotoxins (aflatoxins, fumonisins and ochratoxin A) produced in agricultural crops in the West African sub-region. The acute and chronic toxic effects of the various mycotoxins are presented. Maize and groundnuts have been found to be excellent substrate for aflatoxin contamination, while fumonisins are widely distributed in maize. Other food products for whi...

Decontamination, i.e. cleaning by removal of chemicals or germs, is a term commonly used for the process of treating devices, instruments and surfaces in order to ensure their safe operation. It is of exceptional importance in healthcare, food and pharmaceutical industry as well as in the areas of army and public defense. The decontamination process covers several steps like simple washing with...

The utilization of organochlorine pesticides for pest control chemical has been of great interest on residue contamination from biological organisms in the environment. Green mussel (Perna viridis) samples were monitored as bioindicators for assessment of the water quality in coastal waters along the Gulf of Thailand. Thirty-six samples were collected from 12 stations during 1997-1999 and analy...

BACKGROUND Questions regarding control over a water fluoridation system in a British Columbia (BC) community led to a drinking water management survey in 1997-98. METHOD A questionnaire was constructed based on published drinking water control and management criteria and was sent to 91 communities. RESULTS 73/91 surveys were returned (80% response rate); 31 reported a protected water supply...

Presidential Decision Directive 63 identified water systems as one of the critical infrastructures to the United States. Following this directive and the passing of The Public Health, Security, and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act there has been increased research effort in both assessing the vulnerability of drinking water systems and proposing protection measures. Drinking water net...

Contamination by present-day human and microbial DNA is one of the major hindrances for large-scale genomic studies using ancient biological material. We describe a new molecular method, U selection, which exploits one of the most distinctive features of ancient DNA--the presence of deoxyuracils--for selective enrichment of endogenous DNA against a complex background of contamination during DNA...

The contamination of the Raman scattering signal with luminescence is a well-known problem when dealing with biological media excited by visible light. The viability of the shifted-excitation Raman difference spectroscopy (SERDS) technique for luminescence suppression on Raman spectra of biological samples was studied in this work. A tunable Lithrow-configuration diode laser (λ = 785 and 830 nm...

OBJECTIVES To demonstrate that titanium implant surfaces as little as 4 weeks from production are contaminated by atmospheric hydrocarbons. This phenomenon, also known as biological ageing can be reversed by UVC irradiation technically known as photofunctionalization. To propose a new model from our experimental evidence to explain how the changes in chemical structure of the surface will affec...

Bacterial contamination of injectable stored biological fluids such as blood plasma and platelet concentrates preserved in plasma at room temperature is a major health risk. Current pathogen reduction technologies (PRT) rely on the use of chemicals and/or ultraviolet light, which affects product quality and can be associated with adverse events in recipients. 405 nm violet-blue light is antibac...