How efficient is your workflow when it comes to food samples? Are you sure you're seeing everything your sample has to offer? Learn how LECO has been expanding what is possible when it comes to food safety analyses with a free series of webinars.

LECO's newest microscope, the VX4, fits in neatly with our entire metallographic lineup. For a lab that needs a compact and practical microscopy solution, the VX4 is an easy-to-use inverted microscope that gives excellent image quality.

Why do you use the sample container that you use? Is it something you've ever thought about? Sample containers and crucibles are both wonderfully simple, to hold your sample without influencing the analysis, and wonderfully complex... to hold your sample without influencing the analysis.

But are you using the best container for your type of sample?

By Maggie Gill, Keele University, UK

May 20 is the UN World Honey Bee Day. The honey bee is an important pollinator species that contributes an estimated $15 billion a year to the US economy through crop pollination and £690 million to the UK economy. Honey bees are also important wild pollinators and play a key role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in many ecosystems.

Contamination of food by mineral oil hydrocarbons such as mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) and mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) has been a growing concern since 2012, when the European Food Safety Authority flagged them as a potential health concern. While the main concerns are bioaccumulation from MOSH and the carcinogenicity of MOAH, data on consumer exposure is incomplete. Prevailing wisdom suggests we make every effort to minimize MOSH/MOAH contamination, however, MOSH/MOAH analysis is not easy. Though there is a standard European GC-FID method, countries are still discussing GC-MS standard methods for MOSH/MOAH analysis. The existing methods struggle to deconvolute the various hydrocarbons.

Enter the LECO Pegasus® BT 4D with GCxGC-TOFMS.

Determining the moisture content in cannabis and hemp is a critical factor in the growth and distribution of the process. Too much moisture can be indicative of microbial contamination, which can lead to health risks in the end user. It is also crucial to determine moisture content when extracting CBD oil. However, the plant nature of cannabis makes traditional loss-on-drying methods difficult, as the plant matter could be lost to thermal decomposition, resulting in falsely high moisture results.

LECO Europe has partnered with SeparationScience to create a Food Testing Applications E-Book. This free download provides one easy location for a variety of food testing resources.

Science doesn't stop, so why should your lab?

At our ASMS breakfast seminars, Jean-François (Jef) Focant, Head of the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry group at the University of Liège, Belgium, spoke about using our Pegasus^® BT 4D and Pegasus^® GC-HRT 4D for GCxGC-TOFMS on the breath of asthma patients to improve asthma treatment*. Before diving into the blood and sputum, Jef first educated us on the importance of optimizing your data.

LECO understands that taking time away from your lab to visit our headquarters in Saint Joseph, Michigan, is not always a possibility. Travel alone is a hassle, much less the downtime of being away from your lab and the expense of all of the arrangements. Unfortunately, even our bench-top Pegasus® GC-TOFMS is a bit too large to slip into a carry-on for an in-person experience. Webinars and virtual demonstrations have come a long way in bringing new technology closer for your inspection, but there's nothing like getting to kick the tires and have a hands-on experience to really know what you could be adding to your lab. What’s a busy lab manager to do?