Development of methods to assess the bio-accessibility and speciation of elements in food and airborn particulate matter

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Very little is known about the chemical form and bio-availability of trace elements in foods and airborne particulate matter (APM). It has been estimated that 4 to 10 billion dollars could be saved in health care costs annually in Canada if nutrient intakes by humans were kept within lower and upper safe levels, and those of toxicants were minimised. To determine those intakes, robust, sensitive, easy-to-use, precise and rapid methods are needed. These methods must allow quantitation of the various chemical forms of each element, as well as their bio-accessibility, i.e. the amount dissolved in the gastro-intestinal tract, which is easier to measure than bio-availability (the amount ending up in the blood stream). In fact, because bio-accessibility is a step in the absorption process, and can only be greater than or equal to bio-availability, it is more easily used for risk assessment purposes. The principal investigator (PI)'s group recently proposed a simple method to measure bio-accessibility. It will be refined and combined to other techniques with which the PI is well versed to address several high-priority needs of Health Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The PI and her graduate students will develop: