The chemical characteristics of formaldehyde make it widely used and important in the global economy. It has applications in the health area and in various industrial sectors. However, formaldehyde is considered toxic substance and is classifed as a persistent organic pollutant. Direct and prolonged contact with formaldehyde can cause serious damage to the body and may even lead to death. It is classifed by several agencies as a human carcinogen and may exhibit mutagenic/teratogenic efects and/or damage the endocrine system. Various matrices have been found to contain formaldehyde at concentrations higher than those permited by global health regulatory agencies. To this end, mass spectrometry can provide a very useful tool, enabling the identifcation and quantifcation of formaldehyde. Although various analytical techniques can be used for the determination and quantifcation of volatile organic compounds, chromatography is one of the most widely used methods due to its precision. Coupled to a detection system such as mass spectrometry, it can be employed for the determination of compounds potentially toxic to humans, including formaldehyde. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize some recent and important studies concerning the quantifcation of formaldehyde using mass spectrometry as a powerful analytical tool.
The chemistry teaching process is essential during children and teenagers learning process of the various concepts of science. However, sometimes, it is not successful because of the absence of practical experiments. For this reason, this paper aimed to build chemistry teaching materials using low cost products for high schools of João Monlevade city, state of Minas Gerais. These materials were produced aiming to create a new teaching concept through practical experiments easily executed and that could be presented in chemistry educational events in a funny and playful way. The purpose of these materials is to associate the theoretical knowledge present in class with the practice experience, checking if with the observation of an experiment it is possible to explain/understand the chemistry process involved in it. This project achieved its aim in a successful way for the teachers and the students. It confirmed that though a simple and didactic experimentation and the use of daily-life products can motivate scientific experiments.
Milk is among the food more consumed by humanity. In this way, a study of its physical-chemical characteristics is justified to analyze if its components are by the legislation and if its hygiene conditions, more precisely the use of formaldehyde as a preservative, are established. The International Agency for Research on Cancer warns that formaldehyde has physicochemical properties that make it carcinogenic when consumed in food. In Brazil, the legislation does not establish minimum values for the presence of formaldehyde in foods of animal origin, and the technique suggested by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply is a qualitative test. With the large consumption of milk by the Brazilian population and because it is a food subject to adulteration. The present work sought to analyze milk in terms of its physical-chemical characteristics (fat, density, freezing point, non-greasy solids, lactose, and proteins) and develop a methodology to analyze formaldehyde derivatized with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine in milk samples using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometer.
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