Characterization of the leaching organic migrants from beads used in hydroponics

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The company partner in this Engage Grant, RHST Industries, has developed a novel technology described aspolymer beads under the trade name of Water Pearls aimed at increasing the efficient use of energy andlowering the environmental footprints in order to obtain sustainable food production (soil agricultural andhydroponic applications). The success of the novel material is related to sustainability. The possible leaching ofchemicals from polymer materials (e.g. unreacted polymer and plasticizers) is a concern, as they could beharmful to the plants or accumulate in it. To date though, no standards have been clearly defined to assesschemical migration for materials used for hydroponics. In the absence of such a standard, RHST Industriesdecided to take a proactive step with researchers to assess chemical leaching from its innovative product. ThisEngage Grant application seeks to establish a collaboration between RHST Industries and the applicant, DrBayen at McGill University. The objectives are: (i) the development of a migration test to simulate chemicalmigration under hydroponics conditions and identify the leaching organic migrants using HPLC-HRMS, (ii) thequantification of the mass transfer for target chemicals under different controlled conditions, and (iii) thereview the available information in the literature on the toxicity of the major organic migrants on mammals andplants. Dr Bayen's laboratory is equipped with high resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS/MS), thestate-of-the-art technology for the identification of such "unknown" chemicals and the investigation of thestability of polymer material. Successful completion of the project described in this application will lay thefoundation for further collaboration between the applicant and RHST Industries on analytical methodologydevelopment in support of commercial exploitation of the company s technology for hydroponics.