Analytical Separation Methods for Characterization of Environmental and Food Molecular Markers

该研究项目旨在开发新的和增强的分析方法来检测化学标记物，以识别来自环境，工业和食品来源的污染物。本研究的一个重要部分将是开发提高检测化学标记物的灵敏度和样品通量的技术。因此，拟议的研究将调查环境和工业废水成分作为指纹来源和污染程度的化学标记的适用性。这将对解决环境影响和法律责任问题具有重要意义。采矿、石油和天然气、林业等行业及其经营活动产生各种污染物，这些污染物持续存在于环境中并污染食品。这项研究计划将针对环境水体（湖泊、地表水、废水、河流、池塘）中存在的化学成分，如内分泌干扰物、杀虫剂、激素和固醇，这些化学成分越来越多地被用作环境行为（如积累和污染）的指标。该研究还将调查随着变压器使用年限的延长，电力公司使用的变压器液中污染的指示剂化合物。这些指示剂化合物往往会引起变压器故障，给电力供应商带来巨大的成本影响，在极端情况下，还会发生爆炸，造成严重伤害或死亡的威胁。对于在油气工业中用作粘土稳定剂的氯化胆碱和在油气工业中影响腐蚀的多硫化物，也将开发增强和灵敏的分离方法。食品标志是在食品生产或消费过程中用于追踪食品质量和安全的标识符。重点将放在农业和乳制品行业的食品上，目标是开发可用于追踪这些行业污染源的标记。目标是使用脂肪酸和低聚糖来区分和识别乳制品的质量，并使用乳清蛋白来识别乳制品工业中乳清污染的来源。总体而言，该研究项目将侧重于开发增强的分离方法，主要是毛细管电泳（CE）和液相色谱-质谱（LC/MS），用于化学成分的表征，这些化学成分可作为环境污染、食品真实性和农业污染的示踪剂或指标。**

This research program aims to develop novel and enhanced analytical methods for detecting chemical markers to identify contaminants from environmental, industrial and food sources. An essential part of the study will be to develop techniques for enhancing the sensitivity and sample throughput for the detection of the chemical markers. The proposed study thus would investigate the suitability of constituents of environmental and industrial effluents as chemical markers for fingerprinting sources and extent of pollution. This would be significant in settling questions of environmental impact and legal liability. Industries such as mining, oil and gas, and forestry, and their operations produce a variety of pollutants that persist in the environment and contaminate food. This research program would target chemical constituents, such as endocrine disruptors, piscicides, hormones, and sterols present in environmental water bodies (lakes, surface waters, wastewaters, rivers, ponds) which are increasingly being used as indicators of environmental behaviour such as accumulation and contamination. The study will also investigate indicator compounds which contaminate transformer fluids used in power utility companies as the transformer ages in service. These indicator compounds tend to cause transformer faults resulting in significant cost-implications for the power supplier and, in extreme cases, explosion with a consequent threat of severe injury or death. Enhanced and sensitive separation methods will also be developed for choline chloride used as clay stabilizers in the oil and gas industry and polysulfides which impact corrosion in the oil and gas industry. Food markers are identifiers used to trace quality and safety of foodstuffs during their production or consumption. Focus will be placed on food products from the agricultural and dairy industries with the goal of developing markers that can be used to trace sources of contamination from these industries. The goal is to use fatty acids and oligosaccharides to differentiate and identify quality of dairy products and to use whey proteins to identify source of whey pollution in the dairy industry. Overall, this research program would focus on developing enhanced separation methods, primarily capillary electrophoresis (CE) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS), for the characterization of chemical constituents that can be used as tracers or indicators for environmental contamination, food authenticity, and pollution from agricultural industries. **