A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is thought to reduce the risk of some types of cancer, circulatory, and heart disease. Commercially grown produce can contain high levels of pesticide residues that can lead to serious health problems when consumed. Due to growing public concern over the amount of pesticide residues in foods, the EU has enacted several directives including new 'active' ingredients entering the market to replace compounds banned by Directive 91/414/ EEC. We describe an LC-ESI-MS/MS method for the detection and quantification of 45 pesticides in various food matrices.

Nitrofurans are broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bees and other animals with bacterial infections. Nitrofurans have been banned from use in food-producing animals in several countries. Several studies have shown that animals rapidly metabolize nitrofurans within a few hours so detection has focused on the metabolites rather than the native drug. We describe a method to accurately quantitate nitrofuran metabolites at levels as low as 0.3 ppb in a matrix consisting of honey using the TSQ Quantum Discovery.

Phenolic compounds are of particular environmental importance due to their relatively high toxicity at low levels and their presence in environmental waters and organic matter, following degradation of a range of industrial products such as pesticides and herbicides, as well as naturally occurring humic substances and tannins. We demonstrate analysis optimization by variation of column chemistry, and the viability of reducing stationary phase particle size to significantly increase analysis speed, while maintaining separation parameters and increasing sensitivity.

Sulfonamides are a common class of synthetic antimicrobials that are widely used in human and in veterinary medicine and as feed additives to promote growth in concentrated animal feeding operations. They are regarded as emerging contaminants that are introduced into the environment predominantly in the USA and Europe. We describe a method for the determination of sulfonamide antibiotics at trace levels in effluent wastewaters.

“Anti-infectives” is a general term that refers to several classes of biologically active compounds used to treat or prevent infections. Therapeutic agents such as anti - microbials (synthetic) and antibiotics (natural or semi-natural) are examples of anti-infectives. We describe a sensitive and robust method for the determination of some of the most prescribed anti-infectives in trace amounts (lower nanogram-per-liter range) in raw and treated wastewaters.