Tekmar Talk Blog

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Lost time is never found again.” We all wear so many hats these days that it can be impossible to effectively manage our time. But if there is one thing that we’ve all been dealt equally, it is time.  Saint Leo University (SLU), a liberal arts university located outside Tampa, Fla., recently shared 14 strategies[i] to help its online students better manage their time.  A slightly modified list was subsequently shared on LabManager.com.

In June 2016, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the law that governs chemicals in household and industrial products, was updated for the first time in nearly 40 years. In the past, before the agency could request safety data from the industry for new chemicals, the agency had to first show that a chemical may pose a risk. The passing of the revised TSCA allows the Environmental Protection Agency to request safety data and assess the safety of chemicals that are currently being used in a variety of products. In November, the agency selected the first 10 chemicals to evaluate under the new guidelines. The chemicals included:

• 1,4-Dioxane (solvent, stabilizer)
• 1-Bromopropane (solvent)
• Asbestos (wide variety of uses, e.g. building materials)

Meet the Teledyne Tekmar Team

During the next several months, we will be introducing members of the Teledyne team through Q&A sessions in our blog. The posts will provide an opportunity to put a face to a name, as well as background details about our internal subject matter experts, and their perspective on lab technology and industry issues.

Spotlight: Joy Osborne, TOC Product Line Manager / Applications Chemist, Teledyne Tekmar

Meet the Teledyne Tekmar Team

During the next several months, we will be introducing members of the Teledyne team through Q&A sessions in our blog. The posts will provide an opportunity to put a face to a name, as well as background details about our internal subject matter experts, and their perspective on lab technology and industry issues.

Spotlight: Jacob Rebholz, VOC Product Line Manager, Teledyne Tekmar

The euphoric first few hours of a newborn’s life are briefly interrupted when the infant is whisked away, and the nurse informs the parents that staff will be pricking their infant’s foot for blood drops.  This test, that uses dried blood spot (DBS) technology, has been employed for over five decades.  The minimally invasive DBS test requires only a few drops of blood--DBS is the standard newborn screen for developmental, genetic and metabolic disorders.  DBS is also used in a variety of tests for adults; DBS can be employed for gene screening and long-term genetic bio-banking.

The sample preparation methodology used in DBS and other analysis systems has been trending toward using statistically smaller sample amounts.   This movement leaves bioanalysts experts to consider the question, “Is bigger better?”  Does a little sample size shape the exactness of results?  Are there connections linking sampling exactitude and sampling breadth? Do fresh, alternative microsampling approaches provide similar confidence levels? These are questions posed by a recent column in the September 2016 issue of LCGC Asia Pacific, titled “Know Your Sample: Size Matters”

The term “spring water” brings to mind a clear, mountain stream.  But “spring” or “bounce” in water actually is a safeguard for plant leaves.  Liquid droplets have elasticity and bounce off of leaves.  This “water bounce” protects plants because plants drink in water from their roots, not from leaves.  If water lingers too long on leaves, then mold builds up and decays the plant. 

However, this protective “water bounce” from Mother Nature has negative side effects for farmers. 

Around the world, farmers commonly spray their fields with pesticides.  The innate “bounciness” of liquid droplets forces a considerable amount of the pesticide off of the plants; only a paltry amount of what is sprayed actually sticks. Therefore, farmers must use a lot more pesticide than they need.  And because farmers have to use so much spray to get the desired pesticide benefits, surplus pesticide chemicals seep off plants and end up polluting land and waterways. 

Teledyne Tekmar has added a new solids module to its Lotix TOC Combustion Analyzer. The Lotix Solids Sampler (LSS) Boat will allow the analyzer to measure carbon content in a variety of matrices, including soils, sludge, sediments, particulate-laden liquids and hard-to-oxidize samples.

Teledyne Tekmar has been building commercial purge and trap concentrators for more than 40 years. Labs worldwide associate the Tekmar name with innovative, high-quality products for analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In March, we introduced the newest member of our purge and trap family, the Lumin Purge and Trap Concentrator, an ideal solution for drinking water and wastewater applications.

The Lumin Purge and Trap Concentrator is an eighth generation system, and combines tried-and-true features with new innovation, to create the fastest and most reliable concentrator in the Tekmar line-up. The new features and benefits will carry our company into the next decade.

The benefits include:

A recent Environmental Protection Agency analysis has found that nearly all of the 1,700 most endangered plants and animals in the United States could be harmed by a few commonly used pesticides. The risks to mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and plants is far reaching, and the only species that aren’t considered to be at risk are those that are already classified as extinct.

In the May 1, 2016 issue of Mass Spectrometry, researchers from Department of Molecular Biotechnology and Health Sciences at the Università degli Studi di Torino in Torino, Italy published a study about the chemical compositions and quality of e-liquids used in electronic cigarettes. The study used various analytical mass spectrometry (MS) methods to test for toxicity, including liquid chromatography-tandem MS “after a study of fragmentation pathways by high-resolution electrospray ionization (ESI)-MS.”