How the Indy 500 is Fast, Furious and (Fuel) Fair
When those famous words are broadcast to millions of race fans on Memorial Day, it signals the start of the annual Indy 500® race. Each of the sleek cars competi...
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We do like our wine. Last year, global wine production topped 6.8 billion gallons (259 mhl) nearly a gallon of wine for every human on earth. 1
According to renowned wine expert Robert Parker, Jr., a big part of wine’s rising popularity has to do with all of the good news it is getting lately. “That wonderful antioxidant component found in red wine’s tannin, resveratrol, is getting more and more play in medical circles as a valuable source of good health,” he recently wrote in Food & Wine. 2
While the benefits of wine are undeniable, few of us realize how much and how many pesticides are used in wine cultivation. French growers, for example, use more than 60,000 metric tons of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in their vineyards every year. That amounts to 20% of all pesticide use in the country, which is applied to about 3% of the country’s total farmlands. 3 California wine growers, meanwhile, apply another 50,000 lbs. of pesticides to their vineyards annually. In both cases, some of those chemicals—which include glyphosate—are suspected to cause serious health issues ranging from miscarriages and birth defects to liver disease and breast cancer. 4
While maximum residue levels of pesticides on edible grapes are widely monitored around the world, the same is not always true for wine. Some countries, like the U.S., conduct periodic tests for pesticides in alcohol, including wine, to ensure that no unauthorized chemicals or excessive amounts of these agents are used. 5 Still, no country requires wineries to conduct full formulation safety testing or labeling for pesticide content. 6 The result is predictable. Independent laboratory analyses of wines from California and France show that over 90% of wine tested positive for traceable pesticide residue, including organic wine, likely due to the effects of airborne drift. 7 The good news is only two of the samples exceeded allowable limits. However, as in any supply and demand equation, the more popular wine becomes, the more pesticides will likely be used in vineyards to maximize yields to meet the growing demand. 8
To help keep wine safe, the scientific community has worked with regulators, wineries, and independent testing laboratories to develop accurate testing equipment and methodologies to quantify and qualify pesticides in wine. Traditionally, that task was no easy one. Relying on standard chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques, the process required frequent sample cleanups to avoid contamination and false reads between runs. 9 In addition, testing for trace amounts of complex matrices such as wines and pesticides proved to be time-consuming and exacting work even for the most skilled laboratory scientists. 10
Recently, however, PerkinElmer introduced a newer, faster solution. Its QSight™ LC/MS/MS instrument features StayClean™ technology, which uses hot-surface-induced desolvation (HSID™) technology, a sampling interface that never needs cleaning, resulting in 15% more uptime than the conventional systems. In addition to making for a virtually maintenance-free instrument, the lack of contamination also significantly increases analytical sensitivity, which is critically important when detecting and measuring trace amounts of compounds in the parts per billion.
“The ‘no-dilute-just-shoot’ approach of the QSight LC/MS/MS demonstrates the advantages of the system’s HSID interface and a Laminar flow ion guide in protecting the instrument from contamination,” the PerkinElmer research team says, adding that it ran 200 continuous wine samples without any cleanup steps, and “the instrument performance remained consistent.” 11
What does that mean for your lab? In testing for pesticides in wine, fruits, and other foods, the QSight system’s minimal cleanup is setting a new industry standard by allowing labs to run more samples, reduce costs, and increase productivity. It also adds something we can all appreciate as much a fine glass of wine – more time to literally enjoy the fruits of our labor knowing that what we eat and drink are safe. 12
We are PerkinElmer, leveraging science and the expertise of nearly 8,000 professionals to innovate for a healthier world.
References
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