Journal: Researchers can track hazardous chemicals from fast-food wrappers in the body

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.uab.edu/news/innovation/item/8159-journal-researchers-can-track-hazardous-chemicals-from-fast-food-wrappers-in-the-body

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Journal: Researchers can track hazardous chemicals from fast-food wrappers in the body[/font]

by Tyler Greer
March 29, 2017

[font size=3]Research teams from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Medicine and the University of Notre Dame have developed a new method that enables researchers to radiolabel three forms of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances and track the fate of these chemicals when they enter the body.

This is a significant and timely advancement in identifying and tracking these PFASs, which are known to be harmful to the human body, and just last month were found to be used extensively in fast-food wrapping paper at many popular chain restaurants.

The novelty of the newly designed method is that one of the fluorine atoms on the PFAS molecule was replaced with a radioactive form of fluorine, the same radioisotope fluorine-18 that is used for medical positron emission tomography scans in hospitals around the world.

“For the first time, we have a PFAS tracer or chemical that we have tagged to see where it goes in mice,” said Suzanne Lapi, Ph.D., senior author of the study published today in the Journal of Environment Science and Technology. Lapi is an associate professor in UAB’s Department of Radiology and Chemistry, and director of UAB’s Cyclotron Facility. “Each of the tracers exhibited some degree of uptake in all of the organs and tissues of interest that were tested, including the brain. The highest uptake was observed in the liver and stomach, and similar amounts were observed in the femur and lungs.”

…[/font][/font]

[dae]

1. Wow, if the food doesn't kill you the wrappers will!

[KT2000]

2. Sounds promising -

industry acknowledges chemicals are in human blood, fat tissue etc, but claim there is no proof that is a bad thing. Something like this can shut them up. Expect their careers to be destroyed, if not worse.

[NNadir]

3. The analytical method seems completely unnecessary to me, and is of dubious value.

The LOQ according to the paper is on the order nanomoles per cm², (mass or volume levels seem not to be given.)

Mass spec is a well known alternative, and can further provide structural information that activated fluorine cannot. It is roughly as sensitive, and has been used for many years to measure PFOS, PFOA, and their metabolites in many matrices, everything from liver, to seawater, to brains, to breast milk etc.

For example, here is a publication from almost 13 years ago reporting on this far more valuable approach: Analysis of Perfluorinated Acids at Parts-Per-Quadrillion Levels in Seawater Using Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

I note that modern mass specs are orders of magnitude more sensitive than they were in 2004.

Indeed, not that one really needs one, but there are mass specs FT ICR (Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance) mass specs - as opposed to the very sensitive mass specs commercially sold - that can detect analytes at the attogram per ml level.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Dr. Erin Baker of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (albeit on the subject of ion mobility mass spectrometry) where she evaluated a plethora of extremely sophisticated mass specs, including FT ICR's, for the determination of contaminants in environmental (and other) types of samples, in which she measured hundreds of analytes while providing structural information in rather complex samples, including the types of isobaric isomers that are surely involved with fluorochemical metabolites.

The paper cited in the OP is unremarkable, and it seems to me, rather like going to pick up milk at the supermarket in an F-18 fighter jet.

In fact, since it provides little or no structural information it's less useful than the techniques utilized 13 or 14 years ago.