| |
AOAC is reaching out to its Organizational Affiliates (OAs), including technology providers and contract research organizations, in an effort to establish standard method performance requirements (SMPRs) for determining the presence of chemical compounds in seafood resulting from the Gulf oil spill.
AOAC members from state agricultural laboratories are likely to be affected by the oil spill, which started with an oil rig explosion on April 20, 2010, off the coast of Louisiana, and have expressed growing concern that a fully validated analytical method for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in seafood may be required soon. Methods are available from AOAC [Means, J.C. (1998) “Compound-Specific Gas Chromatographic/Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Alkylated and Parent Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Waters, Sediments, and Aquatic Organisms,” J. AOAC Int. 81, 657-672] and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but neither is validated and both are time consuming for the extensive testing that may be required. Technology providers and contract research organizations have expressed interest in an AOAC stakeholder meeting to establish consensus-based SMPRs against which existing or new methods can be tested and validated in a high-speed study. In other AOAC news relating to the Gulf oil spill, the Pacific Northwest Section’s annual meeting (June 22-23, 2010, Tacoma, Washington, USA) features a keynote presentation on “Reopening a Fisheries After an Oil Spill: Tainting, Chemical Analysis, and Risks to Human Health” by Tracy Collier, Oceans and Human Health, NOAA Fisheries.
|
