On May 28, 2016, the State Council issued the “Soil Pollution Prevention Action Plan”, referred to as “Ten Articles”. This milestone means that China's soil pollution control has entered the stage of large-scale soil remediation. Among the many soil pollutants, dioxin is one of the most familiar pollutants of ordinary people. This pollutant, which is almost entirely from human activities, is highly toxic, widely distributed and accumulated, and extremely high. The difficulty of governance has been named by the environmental experts as 'the poison of the century.'

How toxic is dioxin?

Dioxin is also known as the 'poison king', and its toxicity is 900 times that of arsenic and 130 times that of highly toxic cyanide. The most serious areas of their accumulation are in the soil, the atmosphere and food (especially dairy products, meat, fish and shellfish), which then enter the human body through the enrichment of the food chain and accumulate in the human body, so the food is human. The main source of dioxins in the body.

Studies have shown that dioxin can cause a significant increase in the risk of cancer, but also interfere with human secretion, resulting in a series of diseases such as infant deformities and children with autism. In view of its great harm to the human body, the International Cancer Institute under the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies dioxin as a primary carcinogen.

Governance of dioxins

Since a series of studies have revealed the great harm of dioxins, the governance of dioxins has become a problem that plagues governments and global scientific researchers. As the saying goes, 'When a worker wants to do something good, he must first sharpen his weapon.' In the development process of the governance method, the detection technology is like a sword against the 'drug of the century' and becomes the most important tool in the whole research process. One.

It is precisely because of the importance of detection technology that China, the United States, the European Union and other places contain content for detection technology in relevant standards. In China's national standards related to dioxin, magnetic mass spectrometry is used to detect dioxins, while in relevant EU regulations and standards, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) is used as a detection method. The exposure limits for regulatory requirements in various regions are very low, and the sample matrix is complex, which makes the detection of dioxins extremely difficult.

Among the various GCMS solutions, Waters' atmospheric pressure gas chromatography ionization source (APGC) mass spectrometry is one of the best. APGC-MS/MS provides researchers with a more sensitive, broader analytical range of quantitative analysis. As a 'soft' ionization source, APGC can obtain higher intensity precursor ion signals and fewer fragment ions than traditional EI source technology when analyzing dioxin compounds. Quantification by multiple reaction monitoring mode (MRM) can greatly improve the sensitivity and specificity of dioxin quantitative analysis compared to the full scan mode of the EI source.

In Waters' current proven dioxin detection protocol, APGC is equipped with Waters Xevo TQ-S mass spectrometry technology to form a highly sensitive detection system that significantly reduces sample residue to 0.007%, eliminating false positive results. Appears to accurately measure very low concentrations of dioxins in the sample. For complete application information, please visit: http://www.waters.com/waters/library.htm?cid=511436&lid=134789354&locale=zh_CN

With this series of technical advantages, Waters' APGC-MS/MS solution has been widely recognized in the industry. As early as 2015, researchers at the Department of Biochemistry at Pennsylvania State University, Ontario, Canada, the Department of Chemistry at McMaster University, Canada, and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada, used APGC-MS/MS to analyze dioxins and furans. Compared with the traditional GC-HRMS method, the result proves that the former can replace the latter, and the sensitivity is quite excellent, up to the level of feike. The detection limit of the APGC-MS/MS method is 2-18 times lower than that of GC-HRMS when detecting sediments and fish. The article was published in the American Analytical Chemistry Journal, Analytical Chemistry, available at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.analchem.5b01705.

With the birth of a series of research results such as modern food safety testing technology, pollution-free waste treatment technology, and dioxin bacterial degradation technology, human beings have been protecting themselves from dioxin poisoning and finally completely solving the road of dioxin pollution. A huge step has been taken.

(Source: Machine Network)