We have some recent results we presented at the AOAC meeting in New Orleans last week.  Here is a snippet, but you can download the complete presentations below.

Despite the FDA recall, the herbal weight loss supplement Pai You Guo is still available.  It has some appealling claims.

"Pai You Guo Capsules are amazing natural ingredients that help support the healing of the body."   

However, this falsehood was laid bare by the rapid analysis of the intact powder by DART.   The ID CUBE™ with OpenSpot™ sample cards was used on the Thermo Exactive, and in a few seconds the answer is here.  Sibutramine is clearly present at m/z 280.

Ten Second DART-MS: Ultra-Fast QC Screening of Dietary Supplements and Pharmaceuticals with a Next Generation DART Source           

The second presentation shows how porous materials can be used to sample the surfaces of vegetables and fruit, and then analyzing the swab directly with DART.  As the presentation states:  Using this swabbing approach we have been able to detect the pesticides of interest 10 - 100 times below the EPA tolerances with excellent mass accuracy (< 2 ppm; external calibration).   

• A low cost, stand alone option for "Open Access" labs.
• Near instant vaporization and ionization of sample without solvent
• Reduces effect of thermal degradation
• NO wait for answers

Here are the details: 

1. 10 Pack of OpenSpot Sampler Cards sent via mail at no charge
2. You or your chemist friends spot sample onto theOpenSpot screen
3. You mail or ship the loaded cards back to us at IonSense for analysis
4. Mass spectra and TIC returned by email in PDF format, if you have a Thermo instrument we can send files to you.

ASMS_2011_ID_CUBE.avi

RAPID SCREENING FOR FOOD ADULTERATION AND QUALITY BY DART MS   

• Ambient mass spectrometry employing a DART ion source for metabolomic fingerprinting/profiling: A powerful tool for beer origin recognition      Tomas Cajka, Katerina Riddellova, Monika Tomaniova, Jana Hajslova Institute of Chemical Technology, Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology, Department of Food Chemistry and Analysis, Prague , Czech Republic

• DART mass spectrometry and its coupling with planar chromatography: Identification of flavonoids and phenolic compounds in propolis      Elena S.Chernetsova, Gertrud E. Morlock Institute of Food Chemistry, University of Hohenheim, Germany; Russian Research Center "Kurchatov Institute", Moscow, Russia, and People's Friendship University of Russia, Moscow, Russia; Institute of Nutritional Science, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany

• Ultra-Fast DART Screening to the Rescue: Detecting Adulteration of Dietary Supplements and Identifying Residual Pesticides using Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) High-Resolution Accurate Mass Analysis      Elizabeth Crawford and Brian Musselman IonSense, Inc., Saugus, Massachusetts, USA

• Evaluating Porous Materials for Sampling Pesticides from Surfaces using Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART)-Mass Spectrometry      Elizabeth Crawford and Brian Musselman, IonSense, Inc., Saugus, Massachusetts, USA