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

关于食品和空气中颗粒物（APM）中微量元素的化学形式和生物有效性知之甚少。 据估计，如果人类的营养摄入量保持在安全的下限和上限范围内，并且将有毒物质的摄入量降至最低，加拿大每年可以节省40亿至100亿美元的医疗保健费用。 为了确定这些摄入量，需要稳健、灵敏、易于使用、精确和快速的方法。 这些方法必须允许量化每种元素的各种化学形式，以及它们的生物可及性，即在胃肠道中溶解的量，这比生物可利用性（最终进入血液的量）更容易测量。 事实上，由于生物可及性是吸收过程中的一个步骤，只能大于或等于生物可利用性，因此更容易用于风险评估目的。 首席研究员（PI）的小组最近提出了一种简单的方法来衡量生物可及性。 它将得到完善，并与PI熟悉的其他技术相结合，以满足加拿大卫生部、渔业和海洋部以及加拿大食品检验局的几个高度优先需求。 PI和她的研究生将开发：

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: