Mobile Laboratory Addresses Food, Forensics and the Environment  

Following the announcement in January of a partnership to improve food safety testing, AB SCIEX and Phenomenex launched the MASS-tastic Voyage Tour from the Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando during Pittcon 2012. The route has seen a complete mobile LC/MS/MS laboratory crisscross North America three times between March 12 and May 20, arriving at cities with food testing laboratories, government agencies, educational institutions, and clinical research laboratories. Visitors on board have been able to see and take part in practical demonstrations of some of the latest analytical testing technologies for food safety testing, environmental analysis, clinical research, forensic toxicology and small molecule and peptide quantitation.

Highlights of the Tour have included presentation of a customised, robust and sensitive food testing workflow to quickly identify contaminants including pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals in the food supply; analytical workflows relevant for the clinical research, forensic toxicology and environmental communities were also demonstrated. The AB SCIEX/Phenomenex Rapid Response Unit, a collaborative team assembled to specifically address food safety issues faster and more effectively have also been available to answer questions about challenging analyses across LC and GC workflows. During February this Rapid Response Unit was the first to address orange juice contamination concerns with the industry’s first verified LC/MS/MS (liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry) method to test for Carbendazim.

As well as providing answers to selected questions in video blogs another part of the Voyage’s mission has been to provide application advice to analytical scientists and also the next generation of researchers/scientists who have been encouraged to contact the mobile team through the tour’s website.