In March 2007, several North American manufacturers of pet food voluntarily issued nationwide recall notices for some of their products that were reportedly associated with renal failure in pets. It was discovered that melamine-contaminated China-sourced ingredients had been used to prepare feed for chickens, swine, and catfish. Consequently, the FDA and the USDA have developed methods for the analysis of melamine residues in animal tissue. Both methods use tandem MS detection and employ disposable strong cation exchange SPE cartridges to prepare samples for liquid chromatographic analysis.

Haloacetic acids (HAAs) occur in drinking water during the disinfection process and have been regulated by the US EPA as HAA5. Haloacetic acids have been linked to potential threats to human health thus monitoring of their presence is of critical importance to public health. We describe a sensitive LC-MS/MS method for direct analysis of three regulated chlorinated HAAs at trace level in drinking water without sample derivatization, concentration, or ion paring agents. the mixed mode column was developed specifically for the regulated HAA's in Japan.

Many countries have had to deal with the death of wild animals and domestic livestock due to toxic microalgal blooms in both marine and fresh water. Poisoning in humans has been associated with the direct consumption of shellfish, fish, or toxin-contaminated water. The foods most frequently involved in episodes of human poisoning are represented by bivalve molluscs. In accordance with current European regulations, we propose a quick, selective, sensitive, and accurate analytical method for the determination of lipophilic marine biotoxins in bivalve molluscs using an LC-MS/MS method.

Quinolones, including fluoroquinolones, are a group of synthetic antibacterial compounds used in the treatment of several diseases. The presence of these compounds is an indication of unsafe practices of food production and deficient methods in the production of honey. We developed a sensitive and reproducible LC-MS/MS method for the quantitation of 12 fluoroquinolones and 4 quinolones in honey using automated extraction by TurboFlow technology as an alternative to the commonly used, time-consuming solid-phase extraction (SPE) method.

There is a growing concern over the presence of antibiotics in environmental sources of water. This has caused environmental and government labs to develop LC/MS methods to monitor water supplies for the presence of antibiotics. We developed a method to screen for antibiotics in surface water by applying on-line preconcentration and analyte extraction with LC/MS/MS detection.