Proficiency tests for contaminants in food and herbal medicine in the Asia Pacific region

Pesticide Residues in Natural Products with Pharmaceutical Use: Occurrence, Analytical Advances and Perspectives

“…As an example, exhaustive clean-up using SPE series was mandatory for the determination of OCs pesticides in raw propolis by GC-ECD (Chen et al, 2009). Selective features of ECD for the determination of OCs are not efficiently replaced when using other MS based detectors; therefore it is widely being used in laboratories dealing with the determination of OCs in Ginseng root as reported for proficiency testing results in Asia Pacific region (Chan et al, 2010). In spite of the increased sensitivity of ECD for the determination of organohalogen pesticides, or increased selectivity of FPD and NPD, the use of MS is being compulsory introduced in order to obtain reliable identification and confirmation of residues.…”

Evaluation of trace element contents of some herbal plants and spices retailed in Kayseri, Turkey

“…Since food is one of the main sources of heavy metal ions for humans, the analysis of food samples for trace heavy metal contents has been continuously performed (Bhat et al 2010;Beyhan et al 2010;Turhan et al 2010;Mahesar et al 2010;Chan et al 2010;Moreno-Rojas et al 2010). Plants, especially herbal plants and spice samples, contain both essential and toxic metals in a wide range of concentrations (Dzung et al 2010;Erkan et al 2010;Soylak 2004;McKenzie et al 2010;Kalac 2010;Khajeh and Sanchooli 2010;Pakade et al 2011).…”

The first international proficiency test on ketamine and norketamine in hair

“…It solely depends on the level of analytes and will not be affected by matrix type. The Horwitz based s p was also successfully implemented in a number of our previous PT programmes in food and herbs [25], and it was reasonably presumed to work well for hair samples. z-Scores were evaluated using participant's data and s p and were summarized in Table 5.…”