Identification of Chemical Contamination of Food
Identification of contaminants, introduced accidentally or intentionally, is critical to ensuring the safety of the food supply. Recently, phthalates have been used as illicit clouding agents in certain food and drinks outside the U.S. While typical screening uses chromatography and mass spectrometry (MS) to detect phthalate contamination, current protocols are not readily amenable to field screening. However, ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) provides separation of ionized samples via drift time differences determined by a molecule’s weight, size and structure on a time scale of milliseconds, with the total analysis for multiple spectra completed in seconds. IMS also has a proven history in rapid field detection of threats for security applications such as drugs of abuse interdiction and explosives screening with the added convenience of using air as the separation medium.