GEN-MKT-18-7897-A
Dec 18, 2015 | Blogs, Food / Beverage | 0 comments
If you think bootlegging was limited to the age of Prohibition then you have never tested liquor for authenticity using mass spectrometry. Maybe it is a scientist thing, but we simply cannot help but bring up the subject as people toast one another this holiday season.
I was surprised to hear that my favorite holiday drink (champagne) could be something other than what I thought it was. For instance, cheaper alcohol could be placed in a more expensive bottle and passed off for the real thing. Other times it may be diluted with water or artificial coloring.
Methanol versus EthanolWant to know what is even worse than having your fake drink passed off for the real thing? Unlawful sellers have been known to add methanol to liquor instead of ethanol. Methanol is a chemical originally distilled from wood and mostly now by oxidizing methane. Methanol is found in many products we use, however, drinking it is not good. Highly toxic when ingested, methanol can cause severe illness and sometimes death. Ethanol, which is legitimate alcohol, is the result of fermented yeast, starch, or sugars.
How and Why is Alcohol Adulterated?I do not want to get into a debate on the topic but rather shed light on how scientists have the ability to help the industry by testing for adulterated alcohol. From what I know about the topic, the bad guys are bootlegging alcohol for profit. They use methanol as it gives you a cheaper high. Drink too much and you might find yourself experiencing dire side effects as soon as 40 minutes after consumption that include a headache, dizziness, seizures, blindness, stomach discomfort, and even death.
Keep in mind legitimate producers want to do everything they can to preserve the authenticity of their product. Looking or smelling a bottle of alcohol alone does not provide enough evidence of artificial ingredients. Which is why in this technical note, researchers describe how LC-MS/MS was used as an analytical method with PCA data processing to prove authenticity and quality of liquors.
Is your lab testing for liquor authenticity? Share your story.
The Echo® MS+ system is a novel platform for Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry (AEMS) and combines the speed of acoustic sampling with the selectivity of mass spectrometry. This platform has been designed for high throughput analysis of small and large molecules. The technology combines Acoustic Droplet Ejection (ADE), an Open Port Interface (OPI) and could be coupled with the SCIEX Triple Quad 6500+ system or the ZenoTOF 7600 system.
The Echo® MS+ system comprises of an open-port interface (OPI) and acoustic droplet ejection (ADE) module which could be coupled with a mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer could either be a SCIEX Triple Quad 6500+ system or the ZenoTOF 7600 system. This non-liquid chromatography based; high-throughput screening platform enables rapid analysis of compounds at speeds of up to 1 sample/second.
The ability to consistently achieve reproducible results on many complex samples across multiple days is critical to a routine clinical laboratory. Laboratories relying on analytical instrumentation require stability and robustness to perform a variety of screening and confirmatory assays with confidence. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has become the preferred analytical method in the clinical laboratory to reliably perform clinical testing as it provides best-in-class performance and reliability for the most challenging assays. LC-MS/MS offers the required levels of sensitivity and specificity for the detection and quantitation of molecules from complex biological samples, helping laboratories deliver highly accurate data for a variety of clinically relevant analytes across a wide range of assays.
Posted by
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Share this post with your network